Indian Railways tops Pool A

By Abhijit Sen Gupta

HYDERABAD, NOV. 30. Indian Railways was declared the topper of the Pool A league of the Senior National hockey championship by virtue of having scored more goals in the tournament as compared to Hyderabad, after the match between these two teams to decide the first two places ended in a goalless draw at the police astro turf hockey stadium in Begumpet here this evening.

In all Railways had scored 13 goals in the tournament as compared to 12 by the host team.

However both Railways and Hyderabad have qualified for the final phase of the tournament to be played in Jammu in December. They will be joined by the top two teams from the other seven groups.

Today's crucial match did not quite live up to expectations although both teams put in a lot of hard work. Despite several good moves, particularly by Railways, the match remained barren. Railways played a well organised game in midfield where it dominated the exchanges for long spells in either half.

Railways struck up fluency very early and created a few dangerous moves near the Hyderabad goal. But each time the threat was averted by the last ditch efforts of the Hyderabad defenders.

At the other end Hyderabad had its first crack at the Railway goal when Dung Dung's hard shot into the circle was deflected up towards the top of the net by a diving Osman Bin Abdullah but Railway goalkeeper Srivastava was equally quick to react and gloved the ball over the crosspiece.

A little later Elia and Dung Dung moved the ball up with an exchange of passes and finally the latter took a hard hit from inside the striking area which missed the target by a few inches.

The story continued along the same lines in the second session. Railways' Jagmohan, Chanderpal and Briznev formed a good combination and often harassed the Hyderabad defence. In midfield the Railwaymen established their control with accurate passes.

Hyderabad's attacks on the other hand were sporadic and depended mostly upon the individual skills and opportunism of players such as Dung Dung, Anand Ratna Kumar, Paul Moses and Elia.

But a little more co-ordination and planning in the Hyderabad half and front lines could have provided more punch in is attacks.

Late in the match Railways came close to scoring off a penalty corner when a power packed direct hit by Bikramjit Singh was saved on the goalline by defender Manoj Kumar. In all Railways got eight penalty corners and Hyderabad five. But neither team could utilise any of these opportunities and the match ended goalless.

In the other matches played today ITBP defeated Bihar 3-1 and SAIL beat Andhra 4-2. ITBP led 1-0 against Bihar in the first half through a goal scored by Kulvinder Singh in the 16th minute. In the second session ITBP converted two penalty corners in the 61st and 66th minutes through Raman Kumar and Praveen Thiru respectively to lead 3-0 before Vijay Topno reduced the margin for Bihar.

SAIL beat Andhra to push the latter to the bottom of the table. SAIL scored through Sunil Kiro (23rd), Satwinder (37th), John Minz (44th) and Rajpal Singh (54th), while Andhra scorers were David Noble (36th) and Rajesh (38th).

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