Punjab humble Vidharba 8-0 in junior national hockey
MUMBAI: While Chandigarh ‘colts’ may have landed themselves in a soup for fielding ‘overage’ players, their counterparts from Punjab sailed ahead by humbling Vidarbha 8-0 in the junior national hockey championships on Thursday.
For Punjab, Ramandeep Singh came up with a scintillating performance scoring four goals, Harsahib Singh was the second best scoring three goals.
Gurjant Singh also scored one goal to round off the tally. Punjab in the end beat Vidarbha as they remained clueless throughout the match. Punjab team completely dominated the show from beginning to end.
In the other matches played Tamil Nadu should consider themselves lucky to have beaten debutants Dadra & Nagar Haveli in group ‘F’ by the odd goal in three with the winner coming in the 57th minute of play.
In Group ‘H’ MP Hockey Academy ran riot scoring 21 goals against a hapless Gujarat and Punjab easily beat Vidarbha 8-0.
Dadra & Nagar Haveli have to blame their forwards who missed at least three gilt-edged chances with Prithvi Prashant and Swapnil Shinde being the culprits. This win, their second, strengthens Tamil Nadu’s chances of qualifying for the quarterfinals.
Pune DHA who had been humbled by the Dadra & Nagar Haveli gave a vastly improved display routing Bihar 11-1 which paved the way for an interesting finish in the group.
If Pune can beat Tamil Nadu and Dadra NHHA beat Bihar a three way tie on points is in the offing which means the winner may have to be decided on goal difference after the last round of matches.
Brief Results: Punjab 8 (Ramandeep Singh 4, Harsahib Singh 3, Gurjant Singh) bt Vidarbha 0; MPHockey Academy 21 (Arman Qureshi 4 Kaushal Yadav 4, Aiyun Sharma 3, Shivendra Yadav 2, Nikki Kaushal, Taujik Ahmed, Izhar Qureshi, Amir Khan, Mohnish Qureshi, Mohit Pathak, Kabir Khan, Nizamuddin) beat Gujarat 0; Chandigarh 3 (Gurbir Singh, Gagandeep Singh, Sahejpreet Singh ) bt Delhi 1 ( Manpreet); Tamil Nadu 2 ( D Surandar 2) beat Dadra & Nagar Haveli 1 ( Pruthvi Prashant ); Pune DHA 11 (Aniket Sapkal 3, Aniketh Muthaya 2,Akash Sawant 2, Anand Gaikwad 2, Ankush Kamble, Siddharth Choudhary) beat Bihar 1 (Shambu Kumar)
Haryana finish third
Maharashtra girls defeated Haryana 70-63 while Chhattisgarh boys outclassed the home team 73-56 to win in 28th edition of the National Basketball Championship which concluded at the Divisional Sports Complex on Thursday and take home Rs 25,000 in cash and a trophy.
Results: (girls final): Kerala (KS Poojamal 40, Aarthy Vimal 12) bt Chhattisgarh (Anjana Daisy 37, Poonam Chaturvedi 8) 71-60 (21-16, 15-9, 16-20, 18-16); third place: Maharashtra (Sruthi Menon 16, Shireen Limaye 16) bt Haryana (Rimpy Hooda 23, Bharti Singh 18) 70-63 (23-21, 14-12, 22-12, 11-18)