The Hindu : SCR settles a score

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Mar 25, 2003

Sport

Sport - Volleyball

SCR settles a score

By M.C. Raman

Renukoot March 24. The inter-departmental rivalry in the Railways spilled into the National volleyball super league competition as South Central Railway, Secunderabad, fought it out with Central Railway, Mumbai, and settled a score winning 25-18, 27-25, 27-25 in a women's match that was not so technically sound and exciting for the crowd here on Monday.

In the inter-Railway competition SCR finished third behind Central, but here it fought well to avenge that defeat, despite the presence of Radhika in the Mumbai side. Radhika is a phenomenon in a way. She had almost single-handedly won the National senior women's title for Andhra two years ago beating the strong Railways in the final. It was a great show.

The contest generated interest in what her elder sister and international Nagavardhini would do to neutralise Radhika's attack for the Mumbai side.

It so happened that Radhika led the attack and Central, after tamely losing the first set, fought well in the next two, taking even lead on some occasions. Central's problem was its lack of spikers. Barring Radhika and Hemalatha it did not have the third one to keep up the pressure. Whereas for SCR, Poongodi, Latha, Srilatha and Nagavardhani unleashed sustained onslaught under which Central's defence caved in.

In fact, Central's block was much better in the second and third sets and that brought some pressure on the rival. But it did not sharpen the defence further to stop the rival spikers. Central kept pace with SCR in the second set — 11-11, 14-14 and 20-20.Hemalatha attacked well, though the first pass was bad and setter Vaishali had to run around to boost.

Still the Mumbai side maintained that momentum, but in the final stages of the set SCR did superbly in its net defence, blocking out the rival.

Similarly, in the third set too Central took the rival to extra points. Still SCR managed to come back through block. Poongodi, Latha and Srilatha continued to spike hard to finish off Central.

SCR's coach Abul Haseeb said later he was satisfied with the team's performance, but it could have been better had they improved in first pass and block. He said switching over to new and quality ball Vinex gave some problems. "The players may take some time to get accustomed to this ball,'' he said.

Even the coach of the Cochin Port Trust had a complaint. His argument is that the winners of preliminary rounds, IOB, Cochin Port Trust and ONGC, Dehradun, are in the same group (A). This is not fair, he said. At least one team could have been shifted to the other group in which there is only one winner, Kochi Refineries.

In a men's Group A match, defending champion IOB got off to a flying start outplaying ICF, Chennai 25-14, 25-16, 25-17.

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