Indian Oil dazzle against Mumbai

MUMBAI, NOVEMBER 29: Indian Oil romped home in style against Mumbai, 3-0, in the Pool 'D' game of the 60th Senior National Hockey Champios...

MUMBAI, NOVEMBER 29: Indian Oil romped home in style against Mumbai, 3-0, in the Pool ‘D’ game of the 60th Senior National Hockey Champiosnhip at the Mahindra Stadium, Churchgate, on Wednesday.

Mumbai started off well, but could not capitalise on their good start. Indian Oil on the other hand were slow off the blocks, but soon they were upto the mark. The listless first-half saw both teams missing a number of opportunities to score.

In fact, Mumbai had three penalty-corners in the fisrt-half, but could not convert a single one. The first-half ended with both teams dead-locked 0-0.

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The second-half saw Indian Oil taking an early lead through Hamza Mojtaba who scored an excellent field goal.

In the dying moments of the match, Indian Oil skipper Deepak Thakur scored a brilliant goal to keep the oilmen ahead of Mumbai, but Mumbai must rue the missed opportunities. Leonard Pereira of Mumbai had a golden chance to equalise but he missed it.

Injury time saw T Kullu converting the third penalty-corner for Indian Oil to put the issue well beyond Mumbai.

In the other pool matches, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) thrashed Maharashtra 4-0, while Tatas beat Gujarat 4-2.

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Karan Raj Singh and Vashisht scored one each for CRPF, the other two goals were scored by Jolen Topno. The Maharashtra team looked out of depth and did not manage to open their account. In the other league tie, Tatas took the lead through a 20th minute goal by Asad Khan. They swelled the lead through Sridhar Krishnamurthy and Junad Jada, who scored the second and third goal, respectively.

In the second-half, Gujarat captain Shashi Gorade scored the first goal in the 61st minute of the match, but Tatas were not to be undone by this as Irshad Ali scored the fourth goal for them.

In the dying moments of the game, Anand Sondkar converted a penalty-corner to score the second goal for Gujarat but this was not good enough as Tatas won 4-2.