Kookaburras force Pakistan to settle for silver: Australia bag gold medal hat-trick

Olympic champions Australia won their third successive Commonwealth Games men's field hockey title with a 3-0 victory over Pakistan here on Sunday.
Liam De Young put the Kookaburras ahead in the 18th minute before Luke Doerner and Jamie Dwyer scored in the second half to seal their team's emphatic win.
Malaysia, meanhile, capped their rapid improvement through the Games by taking the bronze medal with a 2-0 win over England.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Australian counterpart John Howard joined a sell-out crowd of 6,000 at the State Hockey Centre to hail the prowess of the world's number one side.
The Kookaburras have not lost a match since field hockey was introduced as a medal sport in the Commonwealth Games at the 1998 edition in Kuala Lumpur.
They won their first Olympic gold medal in Athens two years ago and followed that by taking the elite Champions Trophy title in Chennai, India, in December.
But Sunday's victory, which followed the Australian women's success on Saturday, was secured after a scrappy final marked by rough tackles and heated exchanges between rival players.
Pakistan's Tariq Aziz was ordered off the field with a red card for the second time in the competition after a deliberate foul on Robert Hammond who came off with a bleeding lip.
Shakeel Abbasi of Pakistan and Australia's Dean Butler earned green cards in a heated encounter which had been expected since Mohammad Saqlain's bloody assault on Craig Victory during a tournament in Germany last August boiled over. "My lip will hurt but the gold medal is there forever," said Hammond.
ADDED TEAM-MATE MATTHEW WELLS: "We did what we set out to achieve and that was to come away with really good wins."
Pakistan coach Asif Bajwa said missed opportunities cost his team the final.
"Against a strong side like Australia one has to take all the chances that come, but we could not do that," he said. "Silver is not such a bad thing, so we are happy."
Pakistan, who failed to secure a penalty corner in the entire match even as Australia earned eight, got their best chance in the first half when Abbasi broke through the defence but Mohammad Shabbir could not deflect the ball in.
Earlier, the Malaysians scored once in each half against England through Tengku Ahmad's backhand flick in the 30th minute and a penalty stroke conversion by Muhammad Amin in the 45th.
England's ambition to return with a medal were thwarted by Malaysian goalkeeper Nasihin Ibrahim, who saved five penalty corners, three of them in the last five minutes.
Malaysia finished ahead of India and South Africa to join Pakistan in the semi-finals from group B before losing to Olympic champions and favourites Australia in the penultimate round.
Malaysian captain Kuhan Shanmuganathan said the bronze would inspire his team at the World Cup qualifiers to be held in Changzhou, China next month.
"The team is focussed towards making it to the World Cup in Germany in September and this medal is a real boost," he said.
"I think we played well from the start of this tournament and it is great to be rewarded with a medal."