The Pool D match at the Kalinga Stadium was the first of two on day four, with the European champions entering half-time 3-0 up.

Two of those goals came from 32-year-old forward Jeroen Herzberger with lovely reverse stick finishes both times, while he also set up the third with an inch perfect pass to Mirco Prujjser.

If it were not for some world-class saves from Malaysia’s goalkeeper Kumar Subramjam, however, the score would have been even higher as the Dutch ran riot.

Their dominance continued in the third-quarter with Prujjser and Billy Bakker both hitting the post, before Mink van der Weerden eventually made it 4-0 with a penalty corner drag flick.

It became 5-0 before the end of the quarter when Robbert Kemperman marked his 200th appearance with a close range volley.

The final two goals came in the fourth-quarter as Thierry Brinkman fired home a very nice reverse stick shot before Herzberger completed his hat-trick in the last minute.

In a stark contrast to the first game, the second between Germany and Pakistan was then very tightly fought.

At half time the score still read 0-0, but Germany finally broke the deadlock in the third-quarter when Marco Miltkau finished a well worked move by diving at full stretch to chip the ball over Imran Butt in the Pakistan goal.

As it turned out, that was the only goal of the contest.

Muhammad Zubair came close to levelling the scores just moments later, but his attempted deflection did not trouble Germany’s goalkeeper Tobias Walter.

Tomorrow the second round of group action is due to begin with Canada facing South Africa and hosts India playing Belgium in Pool C.