Challenge Cup, Nagpur:New Police Boys and Range Police registered contrasting victories to storm into the final of the Challenge Cup Hockey tournament at Police Lines Takli ground on Tuesday.

In the semifinals played today, New Police Boys rallied back strongly to drub Pragmatic Club 6-1, while Range Police edged out their counterparts City Police 3-0 via tie-breaker.

The first half was really interesting in the match involving Police Boys and Pragmatic. The Ajni-based side drew the first blood when Snehajeet Saxena converted Pragmatic’s first penalty corner. The short corner was a result of Police Boys defender Pawan Shukla carrying the ball inside the circle.

Stunned by the reversal, Police Boys regrouped themselves and began to play more as a unit. Just three minutes later, they earned penalty corner and Ritesh Kalakoti sounded the board to restore parity.

Boosted by the success, Police Boys slammed two more before the half time through Abhay Baghel (20th) and Mayur Minare (22nd ).

The youngsters of Pragmatic looked tired in the second session and Police Boys took full advantage of it and pumped in three more goals. Imtiyaz Rahim and Abdul Zafar scored brilliant field goals, while Kalakoti converted another second penalty corner in the dying minutes of play.

While seven goals came in one semifinal, there was not a single goal in the match between Range and City Police. In the tie-breaker, Range custodian Amol Bambulkar came up with three superb saves to guide his team to final. Amol anticipated well and parried away the strokes from City Police’s Abdul Shahid, Ganesh Gupta and Abdul Hafiz. On the other hand, Range were also in a spot of bother when Ganesh Thakur’s first shot was saved by City custodian Arjun Yadav.

However, Shaikh Firoz, Prakshit Bawankar and Makarand Mohite were spot on in their respective attempts to clinch the issue in Range’s favour.