Mumbai to play against Punjab in Under-17 Junior National Hockey Championship finals: Hockey Recap
In a one-sided contest, Mumbai whitewashed Rajasthan by eight goals, 8-0 in the semi-finals of the Boys’ U-17 Junior National Hockey Championship held on June 07, 2011 at the MHA-Mahindra Hockey Stadium. It was quite a unilateral game where the Mumbai team dominated the field with the ball possession throughout the two halves.
In the other semi-final fight, Punjab edged past Karnataka by a single goal, 2-1 and confirmed their spot in the finals of the championship against Mumbai. Both will play the title-claiming game on June 08, 2011.
In the first semi-final contest, the players from Mumbai showed impressive passing with exchange of places to bewilder the opponent squad. From the very first minute of the game, the Mumbai team started their offensive style of play and established their dominance on the field.
With seven minutes into the game, Mumbai obtained the first goal of the day when Ganendrajit Ranjit captured a pass from Rajat Sharma and unleashed a powerful shot that sailed absolutely into the goal. In the very next minutes, Nikhil Pujari created a chance for Jarryd Nunes, but to no avail.
In a counter-offence, a striker from Rajasthan get into the defensive circle of Mumbai, but his shot was blocked by Charitra Singh Bishnoi, the custodian of Mumbai. The rebound effort was also wasted, as the hit went wide of the goal.
In the later time, Nikhil Pujari scored off a couple of short-corners and expanded the Mumbai lead. The first half action was completed with Mumbai dominating the field by three goals.
The players from Mumbai displayed impressive game in the second half of play, scored another five goals, and made their victory possible in the single-handed match. In the second half Nunes scored a pair of goals. In addition, Moses Pullanthara, Nunes and Anup Valmiki scored one goal each and sealed the Mumbai victory at 8-0 by confirming the spot in the finals.
Punjab, in the other semi-final match, defeated Karnataka at 2-1 and moved into the title-claiming fight of the event.
Both the squads started the game quite slowly and played a passing-game on the field. The Karnataka defenders blocked numerous shots of Punjab’s attackers in order to remain the score equal. However, the Karnataka’s goalie failed to block the ball played from Karan Kumar in the 26th minute of the game.
With minutes left into the first half of play, Navraj Singh tapped the ball into the Karnataka goal expanding the lead up to two goals.
In the counter-strike, S.A. Basavaraj played a brilliant shot and brought his side into the game. However, it was the only offence from them and they lost the match at 2-1. Punjab with this win has moved into the title-clash of the championship.
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