The Hindu : Sport / Football : Nandakumar performs hat-trick

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Friday, May 13, 2005

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Sport - Football

Nandakumar performs hat-trick

Special Correspondent

CHENNAI: HAL, Bangalore, has virtually ensured a berth from Group `A' for the final round of the NFL second division after its 4-0 win over Karnataka Police at the Nehru stadium here on Thursday with one more match to go.

The other berth could be a toss up between Air India and Indian Bank.

HAL has 10 points from four matches and the team owes its happy position to Nandakumar, who helped himself to all the four goals for the first hat-trick of the current tournament. HAL and Karnataka Police are traditional rivals in the Bangalore league but the tussle here lacked the sting with Karnataka Police slipping badly after promising much. That it could not manage even one good essay at the rival goal tells its own tale. Not that Mondal under the HAL bar would have made things easy such has been his showing. He has not conceded a one goal till date.

Still it took 38 minutes of action before Nandakumar's opportunism shone as he stealthily moved in after seeing Dayanand cross from far. Satish (jr), ahead of him, could not get into position to shoot and the ball was placed nicely for Nandakumar to blast in.

A minute before half time Nagendra, under the Karnataka post, stretched to block a Nandakumar but the ball slipped into the cage. The hat-trick goal came in the 50th minute.

While others like Vijayakumar and Dayanand found the rectangle elusive, Nandakumar enjoyed his purple patch with another goal in the 80th.

With just one point from four matches, it has been a miserable run for Karnataka Police in this phase.

Earlier in conditions far from congenial for any physical work, Bengal Mumbai FC's grit stood out as it came from a goal down to script its first win, a 2-1 verdict over BSF. Leading by a Santosh Kujur goal (13th), BSF looked set for its second win. But Tikken Singh changed all that. First a foul on him by Amarjit resulted in a penalty and Sajid Ansari scored (53rd). Then Tikken himself came up with a peach of a goal from 20 yards to leave goalkeeper Kameshwar stunned.

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