Tamil Nadu XI steamroll past Bhopal XI; Western, UP XI, EME win

Mumbai, Apr 13 (UNI) Tamil Nadu XI began their campaign in the 45th All India Bombay Gold Cup hockey tournament in superb style, steamrolling past Bhopal XI 4-1 in a pool H quarterfinal league match at the Mahindra stadium here today.

In other matches of the day, local outfit Western Railways notched up their second consecutive win to take a huge step towards qualifying for the semi-final league, beating Karnataka XI by the odd goal in a pool J match, while UP XI beat ONGC 2-1 in a pool I match and EME Jalandhar beat Army Green 3-2 in a pool G match.

Tamil Nadu XI playing their first match of the quartefinal league were all over the Bhopal XI players in the first half, but their inability to finish it off denied them a lead. They had as many as six penalty corners in the first half but all were wasted as Bhopal XI hung on.

The second half saw the Tamil Nadu forwards come out with a lot more purpose and they shot into the lead in the 46th minute with A Siva Balan converting his side's seventh penalty corner with a superb drag flick.

Two minutes later, Tamil Nadu XI were 2-0 up with A Kumar converting a penalty corner.

Tamil Nadu XI continued to harass the rival defence time and again and in the 63rd minute, A P David made it 3-0 for his side with a field goal and then in the 66th minute, B Ashwin completed the tally for Tamil Nadu XI.

Bhopal XI got a goal back in the dying minutes of the game with Asad Kamal getting on the scoresheet in the 68th minute.

In the match between Western Railway and Karnataka XI, it was the latter which took the lead in the third minute of the game when Chetan Krishna converted a penalty stroke to put his team 1-0 up.

Western Railway, however, recovered from the early setback with Gursev Singh converting the first penalty corner they received in the 12th minute and then Hardeep Singh put the Railwaymen ahead in the 42nd minute. However, Karnataka refused to give up and got the equaliser in the 52nd minute through Laxman Rao, only to see Western go into the lead again five minutes later through Jayesh Jadhav.

EME Jalandhar came from behind being down 1-2 by the 40th minute to score a memorable 3-2 victory over Army Green for their first victory in two matches. For EME Avtar Singh, Mahesh and A K Bhatti sounded the boards, while for Army Green Cyprian Aind and Jerom Kujur were the goal scorers.

In the fourth match of the day, UP XI after having lost their first match beat the challenge of ONGC 2-1 with Pramod Kumar and Javed Ali putting the UP side up 2-0 by half time. ONGC got a consolation goal in the 60th minute through Anurag Raghuvanshi.

UNI