Terrassa (Spain): Two goals each by Sohail Abbas of Pakistan and Christopher Zeller of Germany helped ensure a 3-3 draw on Day II of the Champions Trophy hockey meet on Sunday.

Zeller scored in the second and 22nd minute, while Abbas scored in the 27th and 38th.

Pakistan led for the first time in the match in the 57th minute when Shakeel Abassi scored following an attack down the right flank. But Matthias Witthaus equalised with two minutes left to play.

In late matches on the opening day, Spain held Germany 1-1, while The Netherlands beat Argentina 4-2.

Germany got off to a flying start against the tournament hosts thanks to an individual goal by Tibor Weissenborn in the first five minutes.

He took the ball all the way from his own half into the Spanish circle to slide it past goalkeeper Bernadino Herrera from the left back-line.

Despite their control and short passing, Spain were unable to break through the Germans’ defence until five minutes before the final whistle when Santiago Freixa scored from a penalty corner.

German coach Bernhard Peters bemoaned his team’s missed chances.

“In the second half, we had three or four good chances to score the second goal but our young strikers were not calm enough in Spain’s circle to capitalise on the chances,” he said.

Meanwhile, Spain’s Maurits Hendriks claimed his players had struggled to find their groove.

“In the first half we did not find our rhythm and this was reflected in the difficulty we had in finding the passes and the movement off the ball in the midfield,” he said.

In the day’s last match, three penalty corner conversions to The Netherlands’ Taeke Taekema helped seal a 4-2 score against Argentina.

Teun de Nooijer scored a brilliant individual goal to round off the Europeans’ scoring while Pedro Ibarra and Lucas Cammareri found the net for the South Americans.

In the first match of the day, Australia began the defence of their title with a 3-2 win over Pakistan.

Australia opened the scoring in the first three minutes through Michael McCann, but Pakistan levelled minutes before the break as Sohail Abbas scored from a penalty.

In the second half, Troy Elder made the difference for Australia, converting two penalty corners while Abbas responded with his second penalty.

Pakistan coach Asif Bajwa was satisfied with the way his team handled the champions.

“Australia is the number one team in the world and we had a very close match with them. It took a lot of hard work for Australia to beat us,” he said.

Australian assistant coach Colin Batch paid tribute to “a quality team”.