Diamond Paints (DP), Remounts and Newage Cables/Master Paints won their respective matches in the Tower 21 Quaid-e-Azam Gold Cup Open 2022 here at the Lahore Polo Club ground on Wednesday.
Double hat-trick by Matias Vial Perez steered Diamond Paints to an impressive 9-6 triumph over Barry’s in the first match of the day. Besides the superb six goals by Matias, the remaining contribution from the winning side came from Guy Gibrat (2 goals) and Ahmed Ali Tiwana (1 goal). From team Barry’s, which also fought well against Diamond Paints but couldn’t finish well, Hamza Mawaz Khan Khan fired in four goals and Horacio Fernandez Llorente thrashed in two goals.
Both the teams started their campaign in a high note and thrashed in two goals each to finish the first chukker at 2-2. Barry’s played better polo in the second chukker and pumped in two goals against one by Diamond Paints to gain a slight 4-3 lead. Diamond Paints changed their game plan and started playing aggressive polo, which helped them hammer four goals against one by Barry’s to earn a 7-5 lead while they also dominated the fourth and last chukker by scoring two against one goal to win the action-packed match by 9-6.
Nico Roberts fired in fabulous four goals in Remount’s thrilling 8-7 victory over FG Polo Team in the second encounter of the day. Besides Nico’s heroics, the team work and collective efforts also guided Remounts to win as their remaining three players also contributed well in the victory. Mumtaz Abbas Niazi converted two tremendous goals while Imran Shahid and Simon Prado also pumped in one goal each. From FG Polo Team, collective efforts were also witnessed as three of their players Ramiro Zavaletta, Juan Ambroggio and Waqas Khan contributed with two goals each and Abbas Mukhtar scored one but their efforts couldn’t bear fruit for their team, which lost the match by 7-8.
Both the teams – Remounts and FG Polo – made a good start and converted two goals each to make it 2-2 by the end of the first chukker. They continued to playing well and added one more goal in their tally to finish the second chukker at 3-3. Remounts turned the tables of the match in the third chukker, which they fully dominated by firing in superb four goals to earn a healthy 7-3 lead. FG Polo made a tremendous comeback in the fourth and last chukker and thrashed in three back-to-back goals to reduce the margin to 7-6. Remounts players also showed their class and struck a field goal to enhance their lead to 8-6. FG Polo once again started playing aggressively and converted one to make it 8-7 and launched a series of attack on Remounts goal but failed to convert more, thus lost the crucial match by a close margin of 7-8.
The low-scoring third match of the day saw Gonzalo Deltour’s heroics helping Newage Cables/Master Paints beat Master Paints by 5-3. Deltour emerged as star of the day from the winning team with a contribution of four fantastic goals while Raja Temur Nadeem converted the remaining one. From Master Paints, Marcos Panelo slammed in all the three goals.
Newage Cables/Master Paints converted two goals against one goal by Master Paints to take a slight 2-1 lead in the first chukker. Master Paints smashed in an equalizer in the beginning of the second chukker to make it 2-2 but Newage Cables converted a 30-yard penalty successfully to get back 3-2 lead. The only goal of the third chukker was scored by Newage to enhance their lead to 4-2 while both the sides slammed in one more goal in the fourth and last chukker with Newage Cables/Master Paints winning the encounter by 5-3. Today (Thursday), the losing sides of Pool A will compete against each other.