The Hindu : Sport / Basketball : Double delight for Railways

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jan 05, 2006

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Sport - Basketball

Double delight for Railways

Avinash Nair

PUNE: It turned out to be an evening of double delight for Railways. If the Railway women had set the motion, its men's team made a tremendous comeback to upstage the much fancied Punjab at 90-81 to lift the Todd Memorial trophy at the conclusion of the 56th Senior National basketball championship at the Shri Shiv Chatrapathi Kreedapeet Indoor stadium here on Wednesday evening.

There was no stopping Railways women. And the Prince Basalat Jha Trophy, the symbol of supremacy in National basketball for women, will once again adore the Railway showcase as the fleet-footed women defeated Delhi 85-61 in the final.

Delhi had ended the Railway's winning streak in 2003. And today there was expectations of a repeat as Railways was without four top players in this championship while Delhi, with the first five all being current internationals had a distinct advantage.

It was a disastrous start for Delhi as Sheeba Maggon and Divya Singh, who had done the bulk of scoring in the previous matches, just could not get their act together. While Sheeba tended to miss five successive long rangers Divya was no better and even fumbled with her patent drive-ins.

Delhi could do very little with the offensive rebounds. Prashanti Singh had a miserable outing as well and it was Savitha and Asha Hegde who managed to steal a few baskets under the nose of the Railway guards Sofi Sam and Geetu Anna Jose.

Railways, thanks to some brilliant playmaking by `tiny' Shanti Saldhana saw both Anitha and Geetu Anna Jose converting with ease. The handy 39-23 half time lead was stretched further in the initial third quarter before Delhi girls could get going.

Geetu stood out once again with her sturdy approach against the aggressive Delhi girls while Anitha, the graceful TN girl in the Railway ranks stole a march over the others in outside shooting.

Earlier in the morning, Tamil Nadu bruhed aside Services challenge at 97-83 to win the third place while Chattisgarh claimed the third spot in the women's section with a 88-81 win over Kerala.

The results:

Men's final: Railways 90 (Riyazuddin 40, Ranjeet Singh 30, Trideep Rai 12) bt Punjab 81 (Jagdeep Singh 36, Jasjot Singh 13).

Third place: TN 97 (S. Robinson 29, Sukawaneswaran 20, Shiv Kumar 12, Mihir Pandey 10, Ravi Kumar 10) bt Services 83 (S M Settu 17, Sai venkatesh 12, A.U Khan 11, Phool Singh 9).

Women's final: Railways 85 (Geetu Anna Jose 30, Sofi Sam 19, P. Anitha 12, Anju Lakra 9) bt Delhi Divya Singh 20, L.Savitha 13, Sheeba Maggon 12).

For third place: Chattisgarh 88 (M. Pushpa 25, Kamaljeet Kaur 20, Rakhi Rajput 19, Navneet Kaur 16) bt Kerala 81 (S.S. Anjana 25, Cini Jose 13, P. Lajitha 13, Beena M 12).

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