Raghunath stars in IOCL victory

Bangalore, Jan 5, DHNS:

VR Raghunath’s double strike in the first-half was enough to ensure Indian Oil Corporation Limited a comfortable 2-0 victory over Engineers India Limited in the 29th PSPB Inter-Unit hockey tournament at the KSHA stadium here on Wednesday.

IOCL thus joined BPCL in the semifinals from Pool A. ONGC, who beat CPCL 2-0 in the earlier match of the day, and GAIL are the other semifinalists, qualifying from Pool B.

In Thursday’s semifinals, GAIL will take on BPCL while IOCL will lock horns with ONGC. Raghunath opened the scoring in the second minute, tapping in a long pass from Roshan Minz to peg EIL back. Raghunath sounded the board for the second time in the 12th minute after a pass from Sunil Yadav.

In the day’s first match, ONGC made short work of CPCL with first-half goals from Mandip Antil and Gurvinder Singh Chandi. Antil in the second minute while Chandi doubled the lead with a goal in the 17th minute.