Indian Oil annex title

Kusum Arora

Indian Oil, Mumbai, clinched the overall trophy in the 27th Indian Oil Surjit Hockey Tournament defeating star-studded Air India, Mumbai, via tiebreaker 6-5 at Olympian Surjit Hockey Stadium here today. At the end of the stipulated time both teams were locked at 2-2.

Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal gave away a cash award of Rs 2.5 lakh to the winners while the runners up got Rs 1.5 lakh. Air India skipper Sameer Dad was declared man of the match, Chiklengsena of Indian Railways was declared man of the tournament and was given Rs 21,000.

Earlier, Air-India mounted pressure on rivals Indian Oil right from the word go. In the 6th minute of the game, Air India earned its first penalty corner, when V. Vinay hit the board after dodging Indian Oil goalkeeper Devesh Chauhan.

In the 28th minute of the game Indian Oil men managed to consolidate their lead when forward Deepak Thakur and Prabhjot Singh mounted pressure and scored a penalty corner, through international star Raghu Nath 1-1. Till half both the teams were locked at 1-1.

In the second half of the match once again Indian Oil men took the lead when skipper Inderjit Chadha posted a field goal in the 39th minute of the game making score 2-1. For Air India, equaliser came through the stick of Sandeep Michael in the 65th minute of the game.

While in the tiebreaker, Air India men – Lalit Upadhayay, M.Amir Khan and Ajmer singh – scored the goals. For Indian Oil – Arjun Antil, Ramandeep Singh, Roshan Minj and V Raghu Nath – scored the goals and steered the team to victory.