Pakistan Polo team qualify for FIP World Championships – Chile 2015
By Victoria Elsbury-Legg
Team Pakistan will be heading for Chile in March 2015 to play alongside the other qualifiers in the Federation of International Polo World Championships (FIP) to be hosted by the Club de Polo y Equitacion San Cristobal in Santiago, in conjunction with the Federation Chilena de Polo. This follows a qualification game at the Tianjin Goldin Metropolitan Polo Club in China against their longstanding polo rivals India, in a game which saw play go to ‘sudden death’ in the seventh chukka.
Playing in the winning Pakistan side were: Captain, Maj Haseeb Minhas ( 3), Zain Khakwani (3), Saqib Khakwani (4) and Ahmed Ali Tiwana (4), who took on team India: Naveen Singh (1), Lt. Col. Ravi Rthore (4), Abhimanyu Pathak (4) and Simran Shergill (5). Following some nail biting play and great field goals and an initial 4-1 lead to India with 52 seconds left on the clock in the final chukka the score drew 8 all. A missed 30 yard penalty by India not only stopped them from taking the lead, but also forced the game into a seventh chukka. It was to be a game of missed penalties for India, but not for Pakistan as Saquib Khakwani converted a 60 yard penalty winning the game 9-8 for Pakistan and a place in the World Championships in Chile (not surprisingly he was also awarded MVP).
So team Pakistan will now join England, Argentina and the hosts Chile in Santiago in March. It just remains to be seen who will be qualifying in December /November of this year from Zone A (Mexico, Canada, USA, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic) and Zone B (Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Uruguay).