We aim to win the Gold medal again at Asian Games: Imran

INCHEON: Captain of Pakistan hockey team Muhammad Imran revealed that doesn’t matter if we play an international tournament or not, we have prepared ourselves to defend our title at Asian Games.

Skipper of the defending champions Imran said, ‘We’ve trained with the aim of winning the gold medal again, we may not have played enough against other teams this year, but we’ve made up by playing a lot of practice matches.’

Pakistan couldn’t qualify for the World Cup in Australia earlier this year and they also didn’t participated in the Commonwealth Games at Glasgow due to the split in its national olympic association. Imran said that it was our bad luck that we couldn’t participate in these international events.

The 34 year-old Imran said, ‘Each team knows the pattern of other teams and the way they attack or defend. But we might just have an advantage over others because they may not have seen us enough. On the other hand, we’ve studied South Korea and India’s matches at the World Cup and the Commonwealth Games.’

Imran is the only member of the Pakistan squad who won Guangzhou four years ago, he said, ‘The game is becoming faster and coaches have to change their plans every 15 minutes. India might have a slight advantage over us in this regard as they’ve played in the format in their league.’

He further said, ‘But at the same time, our training has centered around this aspect too. I feel many teams have a chance of winning the gold. It’s not just India, Pakistan, South Korea and Malaysia, even China and Japan have good teams and are capable of surprising everyone.’

Pakistan is placed in Group B with India, Oman, China and Sri-Lanka, in Group A South Korea, Malaysia, Japan, Singapore and Bangladesh in Incheon. Greenshirts will face their top-rivals in every sporting event India on 25th September.

Imran concluded, ‘An India-Pakistan match is always special not only because people back home are looking forward to it but also because people around the world are following it.’