Western Railway, SRC book semis berths with contrasting wins

Mumbai, Apr 23 (UNI) Reigning champions Western Railway survived a scare before prevailing over Sikh Regiment Centre (SRC) 2-1 to book a place in the semi-final league phase of the 44th Bombay Gold Cup hockey tournament here today.

Also, making it to the semi-final league phase was Army XI who routed local team Bombay Customs 5-1 in the other quarterfinal played earlier today. Yesterday, Namdhari XI and Bharat Petroleum had booked their semifinal league phase places.

The four teams will now play a match each against each other and the top two teams will then clash in the final on April 29.

Western Railway started the match on a confident note and took the lead in the fourth minute when a well measured Jayesh Jadhav pass from a free hit on the left, found Hardeep Singh making a perfect deflection into the goal to give the defending champions the lead.

Buyoed by the lead, Western Railway started attacking the rival citadel with the mid-field doing the job of relaying the ball to the forwards to perfection, keeping the SRC defence on their toes.

In the 31st minute Railway converted their possession superiority into their second goal when Shivender Singh made a superb run down the right and gave a cross to Jasdev Singh who made no mistake in deflecting the pass into the goal for the team to go 2-0 up.

After the breather, Western Railway continued to dominate and also found the net from the second penalty corner, but the goal was disallowed for dangerous play as the ball rose after taking the strike.

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