Title aspirants Malaysia sent an early warning as they dumped Oman by overwhelming 7-1 goals in their last Pool B match here at the Hero Asia Cup 2017 being held at the Moulana Bhashani National Hockey Stadium on Monday.
This win ensured Malaysia went into the Super 4s as table toppers in Pool B with three successive victories.
Despite the drubbing it was supposed to be an easy encounter for Malaysia but the bottom-ranked Oman showed enough character to go down fighting. Surprisingly the first quarter belonged to Oman as they created chances in Malaysia’s circle and stood strong against Malaysian counter attack, denying them any goal in the first quarter.
But after the break, the Malaysian Coach Stephen van Huizen briefing during the two-minute break changed the scenario as they scored as many as five goals in this quarter.
It was dragflick specialist Faizal Saari who scored the first goal in the opening minute of the second quarter(1-0).
Tengku Tajuddin was quick in his circle entry and impressive with his ball handling skills as he scored in the 18th minute to double the lead to 2-0. Tajuddin scored again in the 23rd minute(4-0) after Shahril Saabah took the team’s lead to 3-0 in the 20th minute.
Oman reduced the margin with consolation in the 25th minute and Salmeen Al Nofali improvised the injection to fiercely put the ball past experienced Malaysian goalkeeper Kumar Subramiam (1-4).
Oman’s goal hardly had any impact over Malaysia as they went to the breather with Faizal Saari finding the spot in the 27th minute to take a 5-1 lead ahead of half-time.
Malaysia sealed the fate of match as Amirol Arshad (40′) and Najmi Jazlan (42′) scored from impressive dragflicks to take their lead to a strong 7-1.
