Robert Dowd’s overtime winner gave Great Britain a 4-3 victory over Estonia in their second game at the World Championship (Division 1B) in Zagreb.

Russell Cowley scored twice for the first time in an international game as GB took two points to move onto five points from their first two matches.

GB took the lead after only 26 seconds when Craig Peacock put away a rebound low under Villem-Henrik Koitmaa for his second goal of the tournament. 

Dowd’s perfect feed set up Cowley to score his seventh international goal from the slot at 12:43.

But Estonia stunned GB with a goal only 27 seconds later as Aleksandr Petrov tipped the puck past Ben Bowns (13:10).

Dowd smashed a shot off the crossbar but GB went to the break with a 2-1 first-period lead.

Ashley Tait fed Cowley at the backdoor for his second goal of the afternoon at 20:55 but this seemed to spark Estonia into life.

Ben Bowns made a tremendous save from Aleksei Sibirtsev, but the GB netminder was beaten soon after when Aleksandr Petrov broke clear and shot low through the five-hole to close the gap (33:11).

Estonia upped the pressure in the third period and Andrei Makrob finished off a well-worked powerplay goal at 53:05 to tie the game at three.

Dowd won the game for GB at 63:12 with a low shot from left side for his second goal in as many games.

Head coach, Pete Russell, said: “It was not pretty but we found a way to win the game.

“It was certainly not the best performance you will ever see, but we got it done.

“We know we can do much better than that but we got that win, which was important.

“It shows the spirit of the squad in that we did not panic and found a way to claim the extra point.

“We can now rest our bodies and start preparing for Lithuania on Wednesday.”