MADRID, March 13: Pakistan avenged the five-run loss conceded by its cricketers to India on Saturday by defeating India 4-2 at the Olympic qualifying hockey tournament.

Roelant Oltmans, Pakistan's coach, acknowledged his team was aware of the outcome of the cricket match in Pakistan.

"India won the cricket today so we had to win ourselves so it was not 2-0 to India in one day and we were happy we could beat India twice in this tournament to give us confidence for the future," Oltmans said.

Pakistan took the lead after 15 minutes with Shabbir Hussain, making good on the hard work of his captain Mohammad Nadeem along the left backline, back-sticking the pass to Shabbir in front of goal for the easy put in near the right post.

Prabhjot Singh equalised seven minutes later, grabbing a rebound off the pads of Salman Akbar and driving into goal and India was in the match at half time with the score at 1-1.

Pakistan improved in the second half, scoring three times with India adding one goal.

Sohail Abbas converted Pakistan's only penalty corner, his ninth goal of the tournament, and Shakeel Abbasi scored from a passing move started by Kashif Jawwad. Jawwad offloaded to Mudassir Ali Khan who selflessly drew India's goalkeeper, Devesh Chauhan, before laying off for Abbasi to score into the open goal.

Jawwad made his own goal in the last minute, drawing Devesh and driving in from centimetres inside the right backline and 13 metres out from goal.

Gagan Ajit Singh made India's second half goal, completing a passing move along the right by Len Aiyappa to Daljit Singh Dhillon who drove at goal with Gagan picking up the rebound to drive into goal from the left.

South Africa took the last qualifying position for Athens by defeating Belgium 4-3 in the sudden death phase of penalty stroke shoot-out after Belgium had a 2-0 lead, nine minutes into the first half.

Charles Vanderweghe made a backstick deflection off a pass from the left and Brule's conversion of Belgium's first penalty corner with South Africa fighting back, with an Iain Evans rebound off Greg Nicol's first penalty corner attempt.

South Africa waited until the last 10 seconds of regular time to score the equaliser, a Gregg Clark drive from the top of the circle from a free hit outside the circle on the right to put the match into a scoreless golden goal extra time.

Both teams changed goalkeepers for the penalty stroke shoot-out, Dave Staniforth going in for South Africa and Manu Leroy for Belgium. Both goalkeepers saved two penalty strokes in the first set of five strokes to put the competition into sudden death strokes.

Ian Symons slotted his stroke low to the left to bring Brule in for the pressure shot which he completely miss-timed, pushing weakly to the right post for Dave Staniforth to make the simplest of saves.

Rajinder Singh, India's coach, did not attend the press conference after the match.

Results: