Junior National Hockey Championship for boy’s under-17
Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka advance to last eight
Mumbai, June,4: Favourites Punjab alongwith advanced Tamilnadu and Karnataka advanced to the knock-out stage of the Junior National Hockey Championship for boys under-17 winning their matches in contrasting fashion. Punjab who need only a draw against MP hockey academy were made to sweat by their rivals despite the heavy showers that had made the atmosphere cool and pleasant in Mumbai. Punjab had taken a good 3-0 lead at the break. But the MP side had different ideas as they scored a couple of goals by using the counter attack to their advantage. But Punjab held on to the lead which denied the MP side a win which would have given them a ticket to the quarter finals. While Karnataka thrashed Tripura 9-0 , Tamilnadu managed to put it across Pune DHA by a 3-1 margin after being down by a goal for the first 25 minutes of the match. Tamilnadu thus logged nine points to top the group ‘F’ . Karnataka topped group ‘G’ by virtue of their second win in as many matches.
Tamilnadu were rattled by a 5th minutes penalty corner strike by Anand Gaikwad and had to struggle for most part of the match. PDHA missed a few chances which proved to be their undoing. PDHA considered the equalizer in the 25th minutes when Tamilnadu forward D.Surandar , a consistent performer for them found the net. It took Tamilnadu another 35 minutes to surge ahead and yet again it was Surandar who came to their rescue with V.Madan Kumar striking within three minutes Tamilnadu sealed a quarter-final berth.
For Karnataka, Triupura were easy meat as they struck three goals within the first six minutes through Basavaraj , Pratik and Somanna . The last named added another through a penalty corner in the 22nd minutes of the play to give Karnataka a substantial lead at half time. After the break Basavaraj two then Bopanna , Pratik and Ganapathy added to the tally.
In the other two matches played today Dadra & Nagar Haveli completed the formality in group ‘F’ beating Bihar 8-1. Swapnil Shinde , Pruthvi Prashant , Pardesh S.Sunil , Saurabh Bhayadekar scored a brace each while Alok kumar scored the lone goal for Bihar which was equalizer in the 12th minutes of play.
The match between Vidarbha and Gujarat had to be stopped midway due to heavy rains with the former leading 5-0. Since Gujarat were leaving tonight there was no possibility of the remaining time being played tomorrow which is a rest day. As the match was inconsequential the result stood in favour of Vidarbha.
Tamilnadu 3 ( D.Surandar 2, V.Madan Kumar ) beat Pune DHA 1 ( Anand Gaikwad )
Karnataka 9 ( Basavaraj S.A 3 , Pratik T.V 2, Somanna P.A 2, Bopanna M.S, Ganapathy M.B ) beat Tripura 0
Dadra & Nagar Haveli 8 ( Swapnil Shinde 2, Pruthvi P.Prashant 2, Pardesh Sagar Sunil 2, Saurabh K.Bhayadekar, 2 ) beat Bihar 1 ( Alok Kumar )
Vidarbha 5 (Manprit Singh Chahal 2, Waseem Khan Durrani, Chetan S.Gaikwad, Rajkumar Jha) beat Gujarat 0