Pune trounce Jharkhand 7-4 at junior hockey meet

It turned out to be a very proud moment for hosts Pune District Hockey Association (PDHA) as their lads dished out a disciplined performance to seal a deserving 7-4 win against Jharkhand in a crucial boy's Pool 'C' match at the 35th Junior (under-20) National Hockey Championship in Pune.

Once again it was the trio of Vinit Kambale (3 goals), Deep Patel (2) and captain Pramod Shingede (2) to deliver the goods for PDHA, who qualified for the pre-quarter-finals having won both their matches in this pool.

They had earlier defeated Goa 5-1 in their opening league match with Patel and Shingede both scoring a brace and Kambale one.

Today, the youngsters from the home side took time to settle down, but once they got into their groove they were over the rivals and after a quarter of an hour Patel after accepting a short square pass from captain Shingede pushed firmly past Jharkhand goalkeeper Sunit Lakra.

Two minutes later Kambale got the first of his three goals with a perfect placement.

He then combined with Shingede down the right before providing a precise through pass for his captain to fire home from the edge of the striking circle.

Stung by those setbacks, Jharkhand fought on gamely and managed to reduce the deficit (1-3) through Binod Dodrai in the 38th minute.

On resumption, PDHA continued to dictate terms and slammed in four more goals to place themselves firmly in the driver's seat.

Captain Shingede scored his second and the team's fourth goal in the 40th minute before Patel also got his second to increase the margin.

Even though PDHA enjoyed a solid lead they continued to search for more goals and kambale showed excellent finishing touches as he twice round off goalkeeper to complete the tally.

Jharkhand fighting a losing battle managed to score three goals during the second session to avoid the humiliation of a crushing defeat.

Despite their comfortable victory and qualifying for the next round, PDHA's chief coach, Olympian Ajit Lakra was not too pleased with the result.

"Overall I am satisfied that we won and advanced to the next stage," he said.

u00a0"But the boy's need to put up a better performance as the competition will be much tougher in the pre-quarter-finals. They also have to cut off the mistakes which they committed in this game."

Earlier, SAIL (Steel Authority of India) recorded their third successive win in Pool A' as they romped to a 6-0 win against Kerala to join PDHA and Madhya Pradesh State Hockey Academy from Pool 'E' in the next round.

Earlier, Uttarkhand riding on a timely hat-trick from Basant Bhardwal managed to force a 4-4 draw with Hyderabadu00a0 in an inconsequential Pool E match.

Results

Pool A : Manipur 4 (K Devhor 2, Ksh Wangam B, H Itomba) bt Rajasthan 1(Charita S); SAIL 6 (Jitendra Yadav 2, Sunil Toppo 2, John Topno, Sunil Kandulna) bt Kerala 0.also

Pool C: PDHA 7 (Vinit Kambale 3, Deep Patel 2, Pramod Shingede 2) bt Jharkhand 4 (Binod Dodrai, Masi Mundu, Ankit Pandu, Ravi R Beck).

Pool E: Hyderabad 4 (Rajendra K 2, Arvind, B Ganesh) drew with Uttarkhand 4 (Basant Bhardwal 3 - hat-trick, Narendra Bisht).

u00a0Pool G: Outer Districts 4 (Prithviraj S 2, Sachin Powar, Suhas Patil) drew with Himachal Pradesh 4 (Ajay Kumar 2, Gulab Singh, Norvi Ram).