GND University annexes the top honours

29th Feb, New Delhi: For once, the Inter-University Hockey Championship has been played on level playing field, meaning a neutral venue, with reputed umpires and officials in attendance. Played for the first time at Shivaji Stadium, instead of host University, under the referring of Olympic umpire Raghu Prasad and international umpire Deepak Joshi, GND University, Amritsar won the Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapeeth Varanasi in style 4-3 to clinch the All India Inter-University Hockey tournament 2016 here today.

So far mostly the host universities used to win the Zonal or Inter-Zonal numbers with intimidating crowd and ‘cooperative and coercive’ umpiring environ.

This has been one of the most noticeable bane of colleges’ hockey in India, and the blemish has someway diminished with wisdom donning with the powers that be of Association of Indian Universities.

As a result, the last leg of the universities hockey was held under the aegis of Delhi based Nehru Hockey Tournament Society (started in 1964) yesterday.

However, this has robbed the Society of its original baby, Champion Colleges Cup, but it was in the collective interest of hockey at large.

In the final, both team matched each other and a goal in the last moments by Pawandeep Singh gave the Amritsar team the championship. Till then both the teams shared equally all the six beautiful goals.

Immediately after wasting its first penalty corner, captain Harsahib Singh connected a midfield push to give his side the first goal in the tenth minute only to see the fighting rivals even out through Manish Yadav six minutes later. Manish struck after umpire Raghu Prasad gave a penalty corner for wilful foul outside D by the Amritsar defence.

In a scramble, Karanbir Singh pushed the ball in the 24th minutes to change sides with 2-1 lead.

Varanasi team came up with trumps in the second half, and got the dividends in the 42nd minute. Birendra and Krambir wove a pattern that led to umpire Deepak Johsi giving a penalty corner of which Manish Yadav again struck (2-2).

Dharambir was again cynosure of all eyes when he converted a penalty corner in the 50th minute to give Varanasi again lead (3-2), but his defence let in an easy avoidable close range goal to Pawandeep Singh (3-3) and then struggled to contain the Amritsar warriors.

Lanky Pawandeep Singh again punctured three minutes before the hooter to warm up their bench. A quick lightening shot of a Varanasi forwarded seemed levelled the score in the dying minutes but it struck the right post and richotted off much to the chagrin of the fighting team.

The crown thus landed on the lap of Amritsar team.

Professor Farqan Qamar, Secretary General of AIU, was the chief guest while Rajeev Mehta, Secretary General, Indian Olympic Association, was present in the final.

Each participant player was given Rs 500. (Total cash incentives Rs 1, 60,000).