Odisha, undoubtedly, has been the pick of the lot in the 95th MCC-Murugappa Gold Cup All-India hockey tournament here.
Consisting mostly of young players, Odisha has played a brand of hockey that has not been just attractive, but also effective and efficient.
Against a tough opponent like National Centre of Excellence (NCOE, Bhopal), Odisha forwards struck when it mattered to script a 3-2 victory in a Pool-B contest on Sunday.
Later in another Pool-B tie, former champion IOCL was ruthless in its 7-0 thrashing of Central Secretariat. At this point, Odisha, with seven points from three matches, is best-placed to enter the knock-outs (semifinals) from its group.
For all the domination of Odisha in the first quarter — it had six penalty corners — it was NCOE that drew first blood through Sathish in the second. Odisha equalised in a matter of minutes. It looked like NCOE would emerge winner after a strong third quarter when it had more ball possession, and the goal scored through a penalty corner conversion by its captain Faraz Md. showed that it had the edge.
Possessing wonderful dribbling skills and coupled with excellent speed and 1-2 passes, Odisha came back strongly to score twice in the fourth quarter to seal the match.
The results:
Pool A: BPCL 1 (Vishwas Girish 8) drew with Indian Army 1 (Deepal Kumar 8).
Pool B: Odisha 3 (Satish Kangadi 27, Sudeep Minz 55, Prasad Kujjur 58) bt NCOE (Bhopal) 2 (B. Sathish 21, Md. Faraz 32).
IOC 7 (Gujinder Singh 3, Sumit Kumar 13, Talwinder Singh 21 & 46, Md. Zaid Khan 36, 41, Aarman Qureshi 49) bt Central Secretariat 0.
Published - September 22, 2024 09:07 pm IST
