LAHORE - Pakistan opened its campaign in the Pakistan-India Punjab Games on a confident note when hosts men team outclassed Indian team 51-34 to win the kabaddi event here at the Punjab Stadium on Monday.
However, Pakistan women kabbadi team ran out of luck and was beaten by the Indian female side 38-15. Pakistan joy was doubled when its wrestling team beat India in six bouts, out of total seven contested.
MNA Hamza Shahbaz Sharif was the chief guest at the occasion while Provincial Minister for Sports and Education Rana Mashhood Ahmad Khan and Sports Board Punjab Director General Usman Anwar were also present there.
As expected, the kabbadi matches turned out to be a great entertainment for the enthusiastic crowd. They cheered both the teams with loud slogans. In men’s kabbadi match, Pakistan raiders and stoppers demonstrated wonderful domination right from the beginning and maintained a healthy lead in the highly charged game. At the interval, the green shirts were leading by 30-13. India, however, offered little resistance in the second half and managed to take their score to 34.
The host team’s Lala Obaidullah and Babar Gujjar were in aggressive mood and clinched 12 and eight points respectively. Indian team did their best to thwart Pakistan but the hosts took the title comfortably. Akmal Shahzad Gujjar (5), Matloob Ahmed (5), Mohsin Naseer (5), Rana Nadeem (4), Khalid Mehar (4) and Shafiq Chishti also played significant role their team’s victory. Tajammal Bajwa grabbed two points while Imran, Waqas Gujjar and Ramzan Jani contributed one point each for Pakistan. Raider Sandeep Singh led India’s resistance with his excellent kabaddi skills. He scored nine points, the most by the visiting team. Lovepreet Singh and Vicky also added five and four points respectively for their team.
In women kabaddi, experienced Indian women overwhelmed Pakistan without much trouble. They did not give host team chance to settle down throughout the match. Indian women displayed promising kabaddi skills right from the start with the superb performances were witnessed from India’ Kulwinder Singh and Sukhwinder Singh who claimed nine points each. They were ably supported by Priyanka Devi (8), Anu Rani and Manpreet Kaur (6 each). Nida Butt scored four points while Madeeha Lateef and Augusta contributed three points each in Pakistan’s losing cause. Neelam Riaz and Saira Shah registered two points each followed by Saadia Khaliq with a solitary point.
Pakistan also dominated PYF wrestling event after beating India in six categories out of seven bouts at the Sports Gymnasium of the Sport Board Punjab (SBP).
In the first bout of 55kg category, Mohammad Azhar Hussain defeated Prince Arora while Sajjad Iqbal beat Pardeep Kumar in the second category of 60kg, Qamar Abbas downed Mahipat in the third category of 66kg and in the fourth category of 74kg weight category saw Ranko of India defeating Pakistani Asad Iqbal Butt while in 84kg category, Umair Tariq downed Arjun Sharma, M Inam Butt defeated Anees Sobi in the 96kg category and the last bout was won by Ahmad Shahzad against Jagroop Singh in 120kg.