Central Excise

Pune, Mar 6 (UNI) Central Excise and Customs, Kerala, notched a thrilling odd goal in three victory over Dilabahar Tarun Mandal, Kolhapur, to move into the finals of the 3rd Abhijit Kadam Memorial Football Cup at the all India invitational level floodlit tournament played at the Bharatiya Vidyapeeth Education complex stadium this evening.

The match, played at an even keel, saw the reigning Kolhapur district league champions Dilabahar Tarun Mandal draw the first blood in the 55th minute of play when striker Kumar Pachindre latched on to a pass by Sachin Patil to tuck it in the far right corner of the net.

The Central Excise and Customs men, participating for the first time in this tournament, gave a scintillating display of excellent ground play with deft passing to make repeated inroads into the Kolhapur territory to take measure of their rivals.

From one such raid, striker M K Sunil sent a scorching direct shot from a 25 yard to beat the Kolhapur goalkeeper all hands down for the equalizer. Two minutes later, Sajeer capitalised on a melee inside the Kolhapur box from a flag kick to tuck in the match winner.

Abhijit Shinde from Dilabahar and Benny from the Customs were shown the yellow cards, when tempers seemed to fray, with both teams finding their midfield moves failing to produce any results, due to close marking and tackling by the rival defense.

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