The Hindu : Sport / Hockey : Easy win for P&S Bank

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Tuesday, Jun 26, 2007
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Easy win for P&S Bank

Sports Reporter

HOCKEY / Orissa toys with HP

— Photo: M. Vedhan

ON TARGET: Punjab & Sind Bank’s Sarwanjit Singh flicks the ball past Bengal goalkeeper Tapan.

CHENNAI: Champion in 2003, Punjab and Sind Bank, is now on a regroup mode. Having failed to qualify for the second stage the last time at Jabalpur, P&S Bank chief coach and Olympian, Gundeep Kumar, is determined and focussed this time and doesn’t shy away from revealing his target: “to win the tournament.”

P&S Bank seems to be on the right track as it thrashed Bengal 8-1 in the second phase of the St. Joseph’s-TNHA junior National men’s hockey championship at the YMCA College of Physical Education on Monday.

Abundant talent

Gurvinder Singh caught the attention of one and all with his skilful run-ins and dribbles.

Talent seems to be abundant in the team. The frontline played a fast and aggressive game and counter-attacks were of high-order. On the flip side, though, P&S Bank couldn’t convert several half-chances.

Bengal, never a threat, didn’t surrender totally, at least in the first-half. The defence, comprising Avjit Biswas and Gaindea Tigga, made a lot of noteworthy clearances.

P&S Bank sounded the boards through a quick set-piece. Gurvinder moved in a flash to strike. Bengal momentarily gave a fright, if you can say that, the moment it equalised through a brilliant effort by captain Gurdeep Singh Sekon, who stretched to his right to push the ball in.

Innumerable moves were made by the formidable P&S Bank, which resulted in five penalty corners. The former champion converted twice through Daler Singh and Gurvinder.

P&S Bank turned the second half into mere statistics. It did at will what it failed to do in the first-half. Five goals were pumped in at the pace P&S Bank wanted.

Gurvinder scored twice to take his tally to four, while Daler, Sarwanjit Singh, a member of the Indian team which took part in the 2007 Sultan Azlan Shah tournament, and Paramjit Singh scored one each. The real challenge for P&S Bank will come from Orissa, without a loss so far, when both meet on Wednesday.

Sports Authority of India (SAI) has virtually qualified for the quarterfinals with two wins from two matches in the four-team Pool ‘H’. It still has a match againstt Patiala.

The results (second phase): Pool ‘B’: Manipur 3 (P. Adeba 2, Bikaram) bt SAIL 2 (Tosif Ahmed, Sanjib Barla); J&K 5 (Kuldeep Singh 2, Sukvinder Singh, Sikanderpal Singh 2) bt Tripura 2 (Devashis, Deep Chandra). Pool ‘D’: Uttaranchal 3 (Manoj Rawat 2, Prakash Mehra) bt Jharkand 2 (Hemant Aind, Lachhu Dodrah); Punjab 10 (Gurdeep Singh 4, Sanjay Kumar, Jagroop Singh, Novjot Singh, Deepak Sharma 2, Prabhdeep Singh) bt Puducherry 0. Pool ‘F’: P&S Bank 8 (Gurvinder Singh 4, Daler Singh 2, Sarwanjit Singh, Paramjit Singh) bt Bengal 1 (Gurdeep Singh Sekon); Orissa 16 (Mathiyas Minz 3, Sandeep Kulla, Sunil Kujur 5 (hat-trick), Sameer Rasla, Amardeep Ekka, Lalit Baxi, Deepak Ekka 2, Kishore Lakra, Vinod Pardhan) bt Himachal Pradesh 0. Pool ‘H’: Patiala 2 (Deepan Shubhalra, Malwinder Singh) drew with Services 2 (Poovanna, Kesavan); SAI 2 (Faisal Aziz 2) bt Bhopal 0.

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