Odisha, undoubtedly, has been the pick of the lot in the 95th MCC-Murugappa Gold Cup All-India hockey tournament here.
Consisting mostly of young players, Odisha has played a brand of hockey that has not been just attractive but also effective and efficient.
Against a tough opponent like National Centre of Excellence (NCOE, Bhopal), Odisha forwards struck when it mattered to script a 3-2 victory in a Pool-B contest. Later in another Pool-B tie, former champion IOCL was ruthless in its 7-0 thrashing of Central Secretariat. At this point, Odisha with seven points from three matches, is best-placed to enter the knock-out (semifinals) from its group.
For all the domination of Odisha in the first quarter—it had six penalty corners—it was NCOE that drew first blood through Sathish in the second. Odisha equalised in matter of few minutes. It looked like NCOE will emerge winner after a strong third quarter when it had more ball possession, and the goal scored through a penalty corner conversion by its captain Faraz Md. showed that it had the edge.
Possessing wonderful dribbling skills and coupled with excellent speed and 1-2 passes, Odisha came back strongly to score twice in the fourth quarter to seal the match.
The results:
Pool-A: BPCL 1 (Vishwas Girish 8) drew with Indian Army 1 (Deepal Kumar 8).
B: Odisha 3 (Satish Kangadi 27, Sudeep Minz 55, Prasad Kujjur 58) bt NCOE (Bhopal) 2 (B. Sathish 21, Md. Faraz 32).
IOC 7 (Gujinder Singh 3, Sumit Kumar 13, Talwinder Singh 21 & 46, Md. Zaid Khan 36, 41, Aarman Qureshi 49) bt Central Secretariat 0.
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