King Power subdue All Blacks in the King's Cup
Superior skills and strategy delivered a solid win for the King Power team over the almighty PricewaterhouseCoopers New Zealand All Blacks ending their chance for a place in the semi-finals on the fourth day of play at the King's Cup Elephant Polo tournam
King Power opened up the first chukker with sound technical knowledge to unwind the All Blacks' solid early play. Strong defence from All Blacks rugby player, Robin Brooke, wasn't enough and the King Power team - consisting of Captain Tom Claytor and Thailand's finest players Apichet Raksriskasorn and Nattapong Pratumlee - scored the first six goals consecutively.
PWC All Blacks Captain, Colonel Raj 'Silver Fox' Kalaan showed great natural ability and talent by scoring, but lacked the power to overcome the greater combined elephant polo experience of the King Power team. The first chukker ended with a 7:4 result in favour of King Power.
King Power continued to rattle the PWC All Blacks early in the second half with the mesmerising skill of Tom Claytor who scored a nicely placed goal, which gave King Power an easy winning lead of 8:4
Having drawn first blood in the early minutes, it was then King Power's Pratumlee who sealed the fate for the rest of the game by scoring a succession of goals to bring the result to 12:4 with only three minutes of play left.
All Black legend Robin Brooke made a valiant attempt to regain the team's composure by breaking through King Power's strong defence to get close to scoring, but it wasn't enough to stop the unbeatable King Power finishing the day with an unbelievable 15:4 win, ending the All Blacks' dream of winning the 2011 Kings Cup.
The other quarter-final matches saw Blue Label go down to Sara Story Design 1-5 and Kasikorn narrowly edge Amex/British Airways 7-6. At press time, title-holders Audemars Piguet were leading IBM Spice Girls 9-6 in the first half.
