Karishma Shirvoikar scored the first hat-trick of this Indian Women’s League (IWL) football season to guide Kickstart FC to a 3-1 win over East Bengal here on Saturday.
Karishma scored in the 40th, 69th and 90th minutes for Kickstart while Sulanjana Raul pulled one back for East Bengal in the 86th minute.
With the win, last year’s finalist Kickstart FC moved to the top of the table after two rounds with six points in its kitty.
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The player who made all the difference was Karishma, with her constant probes through the right from the very beginning. With a vulnerable defence, East Bengal failed to stop the national team player and paid heavily for it.
Had she been a little more accurate, Karishma could have finished the day with a couple of more goals in her kitty. But what she did was enough to fetch her team three points.
Karishma missed at least two chances before she could breach the East Bengal defence five minutes before the half time. Two defenders closed in on Karishma, but she did well to shield the ball and sent it to the far corner.
East Bengal, which won its first match against Sports Odisha, made some inroads in the second half though none of them proved fruitful.
Finally, it was Karishma again who frustrated the red and golden brigade with the second goal in the 69th minute.
East Bengal posed some threat for a brief period when the match entered the last five-minute phase. Junior international Sulanjana Raul, who came on as a substitute and brought some life into the East Bengal attacks, displayed her fine skills when she guided a long ball into the net with a deft angular shot.
But then, if East Bengal was hoping to make a grand comeback, it wasn’t on the cards. Karishma slammed in another goal on the run to complete her hat-trick and put the issue beyond the Kolkata team’s reach.
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