Combined Sai, SAIL enter finals

Vijayawada, Apr 21 (UNI) Combined Sai and SAIL today entered the finals defeating Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh respectively in the U-18 Junior National Hockey Championship being played at Guntur.

In the first match Combined Sai crushed Jharkand 5-1.The first goal was scored by Sukhram Dodrai of Jharkand through a penalty corner in the 4th minute of the match.

Later, Jay Kiran, Munish Rana and Manoj Antil of Sai scored a goal each in 10th,17th and 18th minutes while Gurvinder Singh secured a goal in 31st minute to maintain the lead over Jharkand in the first session.

Gurvinder Singh again scored a goal in the 49th minute in the second half. Though Jharkand was awarded penalty corners, it failed to convert them and forfeited the match.

In the other semi-final, SAIL outplayed Chhattisgarh 3-1 with both teams locked at 1-1 during the half time.

Amerdeep Ekka scored the first goal for SAIL and took his team into lead by converting a penalty corner in the 16th minute.

Umesh Yadav of Chhattisgarh equalised the score in the 31st minute but B Lakra and Wilson Minz of SAIL took his team again into lead by scoring goals in the 48th minute and 64th minute in the second half to take their team into the final.

The final between Combined Sai and SAIL is slated for tomorrow.

Before that, Jharkand would compete with Chhattisgarh for the third place,tournament organisers told UNI