Punjab soar into quarterfinals

Punjab muscled their way into the quarterfinals from Pool C with a 7-2 victory over Services in the Second Hockey India Senior National Men’s Championship at the Hockey Stadium here.

Punjab were the only ones to enter the quarterfinal on Thursday.

Haryana, Air India and Tamil Nadu have already made it to the last eight while the remaining quarterfinalists will be decided in the next couple of days. With Chhattisgarh being sent out of the event and Arunachal Pradesh not turning up, Pool C was reduced to three teams. So, who will move to the knock-out round boiled down to the Punjab-Services match.

With this tie being so crucial, it looked set to be a blockbuster. Sure enough, it was a tight battle right from the start and the possession was more or less equal. Gurjinder Singh opened the tally in the ninth minute when he converted a penalty corner.

Services retaliated when Lovepreet Singh scored with a pass from Mukesh Lakra from the left flank.

The initial part of the second half was also fought hard but Gurjinder put Punjab 2-1 up with a short corner conversion in the 43rd. Meanwhile, the match was interrupted twice due to rain, for 10 minutes each, but that did not have any real effect as Services came back and scored the equaliser through Sanwar Ali. While one would have expected the battle to be more intense, it actually became rather lop-sided. Services’ performance dropped drastically as the Punjab forwards and midfielders were all over the former’s goal area time and again. Akashdeep Singh slammed in three goals while Gurjinder scored another. Satbir Singh rounded off the tally.

Meanwhile, Hockey Karnataka said that the best defender, best forward and best player in the championship would receive a Tata Nano car each. The winners will be finalised by Olympians MM Somaya, Mukesh Kumar and Dilip Tirkey.

Results: Pool A: Pondicherry 2 (Manthena 30th, Jayaraj 43rd) drew with Bengal 2 (Asis Singh Sengar 38th, Gurvinder Singh 65th); Pool B: Delhi 10 (Avatar Singh Mann 18th, 52nd, Umesh 34th, 44th, Shyambir 46th, 48th, Mohit 41st, 58th, Lalit 32nd, Pawan Singh Chouhan 54th) bt Mizoram 1 (Lalringheta 1st); Andhra Pradesh 5 (Ramesh Krishnan 15th, 33rd, Ramesh Setti 17th, Sandeep Raju 30th, Krishna Kishore 69th) bt Himachal Pradesh 4 (Amit Lochab 13th, 48th, Sarabjeet Singh 23rd, Lakhvir Singh 70th); Pool C: Punjab 7 (Gurjinder Singh 9th, 43rd, 62nd, Akashdeep Singh 58th, 66th, 70th, Satbir Singh 68th) bt Services 2 (Lovepreet Singh 25th, Sanwar Ali 54th); Pool D: Jharkhand 7 (Ajitesh Roy 2nd, 34th, 40th, 46th, 68th, Anil Xaxa 41st, Gainder Tigga 70th) bt Uttarakhand 1 (Manoj Rawat 27th); Chandigarh 14 (Deepanshu Bhargava 7th, 16th, 23rd, Raminder Singh 12th, 53rd, Sandeep Singh 30th, 66th, Lakhwinder Singh 38th, 51st, Ravinder Singh 24th, Harmanpreet Singh 32nd, Shahnawaz Alam 45th, Lovedeep 60th, Kulbhushan Vashisht 63rd) bt Goa 2 (Glen Prad 46th, Dattesh Priolkar 70th)