The Hindu : Sport / Hockey : SAI (STC Centre) keeps winning

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Apr 12, 2005

Sport

Sport - Hockey

SAI (STC Centre) keeps winning

HYDERABAD, APRIL 11. Sports Authority of India (STC Centre) continued its unbeaten run in the A-Division Super league hockey championship with a hard-fought 3-2 win against AOC Centre at Begumpet Police Stadium here on Monday.

Winger Satyanarayana dribbled his way down the left-flank into the striking zone only to essay a fine, reverse hit on the run to open the account for AOC Centre in the seventh minute. But, in a quick counter-attack within two minutes, M.A. Aleem had a fine run down the centre before executing a carpet drive to level the scores for SAI (1-1).

Soon, there was lot of rough play forcing referee Ramesh Kutty to show yellow cards to Barla (AOC) and Veer Singh and Nagaraj (both from SAI).At half-time, the teams were locked one-all.

On resumption, SAI went into lead with G. Vijay Kumar latching on to a neat pass from Veer Singh on the right flank to find the target. Though AOC earned a penalty-corner in a counter-attack it was wasted. Quite surprisingly, the Armymen showed a lot of indiscipline on the field to be repeatedly cautioned by the referees. SAI also had the misfortune of seeing Vinesh Kumar earn a yellow card suspension.

AOC's Bharath showed enterprise to trap a long ball from his own half to slip into the striking zone to score (2-2). Undeterred, SAI went on the offensive to take the lead through an opportunistic Satya Maheshwar Rao who deflected from the right of `D' an indirect penalty-corner taken by M.A. Aleem. And, this turned out to be the match-winner for Hostel boys.

In all, both the teams earned three penalty-corners. This was SAI's fourth win in four matches and for AOC it was the first loss in three matches.

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