Railways Sports Promotion Board finally managed to get its act together in the final 15 minutes of the game, slamming four goals to coast past Chandigarh 5-1 in the semifinals of the Men’s National Hockey Championship-A Division here on Saturday. It would now take on Punjab & Sind Bank for the title, which edged past an erratic Punjab 1-0 in the other semifinal.
Chandigarh started well and pressed ahead in the opening quarter, one of its attacks resulting in Karanpal Singh’s stick-check on Damandeep Singh and a stroke, which captain Gaurav Tokhi dutifully put his team ahead. But other than superior physical strength, which it used well to defend in numbers, there was little application from the side. Railways, on the other hand, showed enough skills but was unable to make it count. As many as 10 penalty corners were wasted. The shots were off target and hardly any support for the moves created by Affan Yousuf and Nilakanta Sharma.
The latter finally levelled when his pass from the backline deflected off a defender stick to go into the goal. Once that happened, Railways suddenly was a transformed side. The players began searching for deflections and field goals and succeeded. A penalty stroke in the 59th minute was converted by Karanpal as the team, and the player himself, came a full circle in the game.
In the other match, Punjab had its moments but failed to finish off. It took a diving deflection from Karamjit Singh in the 57th minute to assure his team of a spot in the final.
The results (semifinals): RSPB 5 (Nilakanta Sharma, Ajit Pandey, Raju Pal, Yuvraj Walmiki, Karanpal Singh) bt Chandigarh 1 (Gaurav Tokhi); PSB 1 (Karamjit Singh) bt Punjab 0.
