Sports Authority of India and Odisha completed their league engagements with emphatic victories as the final set of pool matches of the Hockey India-junior National men’s championship came to an end at the Mayor Radhakrishnan Stadium here on Thursday.
Odisha blanked Mumbai 4-0 in a Pool B match and SAI thumped Bhopal 5-0 in the last match (Pool D) of the day. Odisha and SAI will now clash in the second semifinal and Punjab will face Haryana in the first last four match.
Sanjit Toppo opened the account for Odisha in the very first minute through a penalty corner. Anand Lakra made it 2-0 with four minutes remaining for the first half. Odisha slowed down the tempo in the second half but still scored two more goals through Joseph Toppo and Anuranjan Tirkey.
SAI played aggressively in the first half scoring two goals. Though Bhopal gave a better account in the second half, it still fell short.
The results:
Pool B: HP 4 (Harminjeet Singh, Abishek, Badal Choudhary 2) bt Karnataka 3 (S.A. Anjaneya, Jagath Nanchappa 2); Odisha 4 (Sanjit Toppo, Anand Lakra, Joseph Toppo, Anuranjan Tirkey) bt Mumbai 0.
Pool D: Maharashtra 6 (Razik Shaikh, Shubham Thakur, Mithilesh Kumar, Sumit Kumar 2, Laxman Kare) bt Chhattisgarh 5 (Wasiullah Khan 2, Akash Tamrakar, Raja Khan, Kartik Yadav); SAI 5 (Navdeep Singh, Ajay Yadav, Ajit Ku Pandey 2, Pawan Rajbhar) bt Bhopal 0.
