LAHORE - Black Horse Paints and Army Wednesday won their respective matches of the Samba Bank Lahore Open Polo Championship 2017 being played here at the Lahore Polo Club (LPC) ground.

The first match of the day turned out to be a thriller as Black Horse Paints had to struggle hard to beat Newage 4-3. Hissam Ali Hyder emerged as hero of the day by hammering a hat-trick for Black Horse while Agha Musa contributed one. From Newage, Ahmed Ali Tiwana scored a brace and Adnan Jalil Azam converted one.

Newage scored the opening goal of the match through Adnan Jalil to take 1-0 lead. Black Horse then bounced back in style by banging in two impressive goals through Hissam and Agha Musa to snatch the lead from Newage, making it 2-1. The only goal of the second chukker was hit by Newage through Ahmed Ali to level the score 2-2 while Hissam also hammered a field goal to give Black Horse 3-2 edge once again.

In the fourth and decisive chukker, Ahmed Ali played superbly and scored a field goal to once again equalize the score 3-3. Both the teams then launched a series of attacks on each other’s goal but Hissam finally succeeded in pumping in the match-winning goal off a 30-yard penalty hit to steer Black Horse Paints to a nail-biting 4-3 win. Raja Arslan Najeeb and Hernan Pieres were field umpires.

The second encounter of the day proved to be a one-sided affair as Army taught a polo lesson to Guard Group by thrashing them 10-1. Luis Mighal Duggan excelled for Army by slamming superb seven goals while Maj Adil Rao (2 goals) and Maj Omer Minhas (1 goal) completed the tally for the victors. Abdul Rehman Monnoo hit the only goal for Guard Group.

Army were off to flying start as they thwarted tremendous three goals in the first chukker to have 3-0 lead. They further increased their lead to 6-0 in the second chukker by banging in three more goals. The third chukker saw Guard Group converting their only goal through Abdul Rehman Monnoo to reduce the lead to 6-1. After that, it were once again Army players who continued to excel and added two more goals in their total to further stretch their lead to 8-1.

In the fourth and last chukker, they malloted two more goals to finish the match with having 10-1 lead. Raja Arslan Najeeb and Eulogio Celestino officiated the match as field umpires.

Two more matches will be contested today (Thursday), as Allied Bank will play against Green Orchard/Rijas at 2:00 pm while Barry’s will vie against Habib Metro Lions/Master Paints at 3:00 pm.