Begumpur retains OTHL Delhi Cup

Gifted boys of Begumpur school lifted again the One Thousand Hockey Legs Delhi Cup, sweating a lot in the process.

Their challenger Saket Hr. Sec. School did really put up a good show, even leading by a lone goal till half time.

Kishore Arya, lurking around the circle area gently tapped in a deligent push by Rohit Varan to cancel out the lead, and then Brigopal Patra, who otherwise was playing in the back as a defender, made many intelligent moves that helped Begumpur retain the title they won easily last year.

Begumpur thus defeated Saket 3-1 to lift the Delhi Cup 2002, whose final had to be held belatedly as there was law and order problem on Dec 28th when the finals were originally scheduled to be held in the Major Dhyan Chand National Stadium.

Eight schools, who subscribed to One Thousand Hockey Legs program of Hockey Citizen Group, played for the home honours between Dec 21 and 27th on round robin format which helped identify the finalists.

In a tense finish, Saket Sr. Sec. School piped Anglo-Arabic Sr. Sec. School to move to the final, which was played yesterday in the Begumpur school grounds.

Anglo-Arabic school, however, had enough reasons to smile, as their Junior Team outclassed Saket junior to win the title. The scoreline was 1-0.

Meanwhile Savodya Bal Vidhyala, Ashok Vihar, lost to combined Saket and Airforce Bal Bharti School team.

Anglo-Arabic School Senior team struck five times against a lone goal by DTEA Sr. Sec. School Mandir Marg, to win the bronze in the senior category.

Under-14 are classified as juniors and Under-16 as Seniors.

Pervez Alam, the kingpin of Anglo-Arabic school was declared Player of the Tournament.

Five players from Saket and four from Begumpur were included in the OTHL Delhi XI. They are Pawan Kumar, Sonu, Sushil, Amit Prasad and Elazer Dung Dung from Saket; Brothers Rahul Varan and Rohit Varan, Vikas Paswan and Brigopal Patra from Begumpur.

Delhi Cup is part of the larger framework of providing competitive atmosphere to young kids who take up hockey at the initiative of Hockey Citizen Group.

Delhi based Hockey Citizen Group, founded in the late 2008, is successfully implementing what it fancifully call One Thousand Hockey Legs project, which aims to introduce hockey to 500 school kids. The project is being implemented in five cities – Delhi, Kanpur, Kolkata, Chennai and Puducherry.
At the year end, a competition is held in each city involving schools subscribed to OTHL, and is named after the City.