Indian Airlines rout SAIL

Star-studded Indian Airlines justified their top billing when they routed SAIL 5-1 to enter the quarter-final league in the Indian Oil Servo Beighton Cup hockey tournament in Kolkata on Wednesday.

Besides Airlines, IHF Juniors and Army Eleven also made it to the last eight stage, defeating Sikh Regimental Centre and Corps of Signals 3-2 and 3-1 respectively.

The Airlines-SAIL match saw the former dominating right from the start and scoring at regular intervals. After Mukesh Kumar put Airlines into the lead in the sixth minute Sushil Tirkey restored parity for SAIL four minutes before the breather.

The beginning of the second half saw Airlines going all out and pumping in four more goals in the 36th, 49th, 51st and 64th minutes through Virender Singh, Altafur Rahman, Y.S.Rawat and Bimal Lakra.

The second match of the day between IHF Juniors and Sikh Regimental Center went into a tie-breaker, where IHF prevailed.

While Vikramjit Singh, Sizoha and Vivek Gupta scored for IHF, Baljit Singh and Satnam Singh (jr) found the target for SRC.

In a match between two army outfits, Army Xl and Corps of Signals, the former went ahead, scoring in the 11th minute through Susan. The lead was shortlived as Signals struck back a couple of minutes later through S K Tigga.

The second half saw Army eleven starting with dogged determination. They scored twice more through Avtar and Susan again in the 36th and 68th minutes respectively to make sure of their berth in the quarter-final league.