Challenge Cup

City, Range Police in SF

Nagpur: Police teams have a field day at the Challenge Cup hockey tournament on Saturday. Both City and Range Police sides recorded hard-fought wins to clinch the last two semifinal berths at Police Lines Takli ground.

City Police scored a goal each in either half to defeat State Reserve Police Force. Ganesh Gupta sounded the board in the 27th minute, while experienced forward Sandeep Nagrulkar added one more in the 54th minute to seal the fate of SRPF.

Both City Police and SRPF failed to utilise their penalty corners. Cops wasted eight, while SRPF did not convert their two short corners.

The last quarterfinal was a sea-saw battle and Range had to use all their experience to get the better of Divisional Sports Association Central Railway 1-0.

After a barren first half, Vinod Selokar converted penalty corner much to the relief of his teammates. Range could have won by bigger margin but Amit Yesur squandered away at least couple of goal-scoring chances.

In the dying minutes of the game, Yesur dodged past several defenders including the DSA Central Railway goalkeeper Mohammad Shamim but much to the frustration of his teammates the striker hit wide of the target.

Dhiraj Wagh of DSACR also failed to convert couple of chances in the second half.