In what can be billed as the best of the match held so far in the ongoing senior Nehru cup, two of the top outfits of Indian hockey, Punjab and Sind Bank and Indian Oil Corporation churned out a Champagne stuff to keep the goody Shivaji stadium crowd on the edge of the seat all through the seventy minutes of the game.

A spirited reply from the experienced IOC in fact turned what once appeared a routine walk away victory after it suffered an uncharacteristic 2-4 trailing at half time.

However, two of WSH stars on the pay rolls of IOC – forward Roshan Minz and defender Gurjinder Singh – being in the forefront whatever transpired on the turf.

The same PSB team that showed so much verve and veracity inside the circle – scoring two goals on counter attacks, with beautiful anticipation and clinical accuracy in shooting – seemed to have lost the cohesion that marked before.

IOC veterans in the front Prabhjot Singh and Deepak Thakur, though slow but has greatly managed that with roving eyes and guile passing worked in tandem with other youngsters like Affan Yousaff to create cornucopia of penalty corners, as they knew they have in them Rs. 1 crore prize money winning Gurjinder Singh.

The burly defender did not let them down, though much expected direct conversion came only once out of a dozen attempts, but could coolly made use of all the three penalty strokes that the team managed to extract from the umpires, Harsha Vardhan and Ripudaman Singh.

In fact, when Ripudaman awarded a penalty corner six minutes before the hooter, and when the score tantalizing at 4-5 in favour of the bankmen, the entire PSB team protested, game stopped for about five minutes.

But the umpires, as expected, stood ground, trying to reason with the fact that the ball hit the cheek of a tackler.

Gurjinder made no mistakes and the score came alive with 5-5. It was his fourth goal. The other scorer for the IOC was Deepak Thakur who chanced on a penalty corner rebound after Gurjinder’s drags posed no problem for the bank custodian.

In terms of fight back, the neatness with which the game was played made the crowd happy.

Ten goals in a match must please any spectator.

The contest was remarkable for one things: that PSB struck five field goals, while IOC made all its goals through strokes and PCs, thus presenting contrasting style of hockey to the spectators.

Ramandeep Pal and Daler Singh Singh struck a brace, with captain Sarwanjit Singh striking a lightening goal midway through the first half.

Tomorrow’s matches:

Army XI Vs Air India (13 hrs) and ONGC Vs Bangladesh XI (14.30 hrs).