Titleholders Dubai dominate their first Queen’s Cup game
By Herbert Spencer
Ali Albwardy’s Dubai, the reigning titleholders, handily won their first match of the 2011 Harcourt Development Queen’s Cup Thursday, downing Oussama Aboughazale’s Sumaya 13-9 at Albwardy’s private ground in Berkshire.
Dubai, with Albwardy’s 2-goal son Rashid in the patron’s slot, is spearheaded by 10-goaler Adolfo Cambiaso, backed by new team-mates Lucas Criado and England’s Ollie Cudmore.
With Cambiaso in top form, the game was never in any serious doubt. There was little that Sumaya, led by 8-goaler Javier Novillo Astrada, could do and they trailed by three or four goals throughout most of the match.
Cambiaso read the game like a eagle scanning for prey and put on a dazzling display of broken field riding and magical stick work of the kind that he seemed to lack in the 26-goal Florida tournaments this spring when he failed to reach a single final.
In England last year, Dubai won both the Queen’s Cup and the British Open. If Cambiaso continues to show the form he did in this first match, Dubai will be a hard team to beat in both these 2011 tournaments.
In the day’s other league matches of the Guards Polo Club tournament, Lyndon Lea’s Zacara defeated Paul Oberschneider’s La Golondrina, new to the Queen’s Cup, 12- 9 at Lea’s private ground and Edouard Carmignac’s Talandracas squeaked by Christopher Hanbury’s El Remanso 12 – 11 at Guards