Hockey: Pakistan crushes Japan to qualify for HWC-2010
Updated at: 2143 PST, Sunday, November 08, 2009

Pakistan booked a place in the final round of the next year’s hockey World Cup with a convincing 3-1 win over Japan in the final match of the qualifiers at Lille (France) on Sunday.

LILLE: Pakistan beat Japan 3-1 in Hockey World Cup 2010 Qualifiers to book its place in the next year’s world cup championship.Suhail Abbas scored stunning 2 goals and Hasim Khan contributed one goal to steer Pakistan to an outstanding win. The hockey World Cup 2010 is scheduled to be played in New Delhi, India Feb 28-March 13.

Pakistan, the four-times World Cup winners, will now join the nine other teams, with two places still up for grabs, which have already made it to the final round.

International Hockey Federation (FIH) will soon hold another two qualifying tournaments, one in New Zealand and the other in Argentina, to fill the vacant berths for the final round.

The final standings in the qualifying round at Lille were:1-Pakistan, 2-Japan, 3-Poland, 4-France, 5-Russia, 6-Italy.

Pakistan, which had to appear in the World Cup qualifiers for the first time ever, had beaten Japan 6-1 in the league, also defeating Italy, Russia, France before being beaten by Poland in the last league encounter.

Despite defeat by Poland, Pakistan topped the league points table, thus setting up a first-position duel against fellow Asians Japan. -APP