ONGC (Oil & Natural Gas Corporation), Delhi produced a slick performance and riding on P.P. Macheiah’s fine hat-trick registered a thumping 8-1 victory over a jaded Western Railway, Mumbai in a Pool-A round-robin league match of the 11th PMC Bank-Guru Tegh Bahadur Gold Cup All India Hockey Tournament, being organised by the Mumbai Hockey Association Limited (MHAL) and played at the MHAL-Mahindra Stadium, Churchgate on Wednesday. Punjab & Maharashtra Cooperative (PCM) Bank is the sponsors of this tournament, which is being organised under the auspices of Hockey India.
Indian Oil’s ace forward, Olympian Prabhjot Singh (left) takes a reverse hit, at the Northern Railway goal .
Macheiah’s teammates Mandeep Antil, Amit Malik, Diwakar Ram, Sumit Kumar and K.H. Jayanta chipped in with a goal each to complete the rout.
Earlier in the day, former champions Indian Oil launched their campaign with an authoritative 6-1 win against Northern Railway in a Pool-B fixture. Indian Oil recent winners of the MCC Murugappa tournament in Chennai, led by a slender 1-0 margin in the first half but produced a strong second half pumping in five goals during that period to run away with the match.
Full back Sunil Yadav and midfielder Pradhan Somanna, both scored a brace each, while Olympians Prabhjot Singh and Deepak Thakur, the skipper of the side netted a goal each to complete the tally of goals. Northern who were a disjointed lot managed to reduce the margin through Shamsher’s late goal.
Displaying excellent understanding ONGC stitched together some perfect passing bouts to unsettle the Western defence and scored at regular intervals to open up a healthy 6-1 half-time lead.
ONGC opened the scoring when captain Tyrone Pereira with a perfect defence splitting through pass put Macheiah in the clear and the latter coolly slotted past goalkeeper Saurabh Singh in the 14th minute. Six minutes later Antil from a snap effort sounded the boards before Macheiah scored two more goals in as many minutes to consolidate ONGC’s lead to 4-0. Continuing to exert pressure on the Western citadel, ONGC further increased the lead with Malik directing home Gurvinder Singh Chandi’s centre from the left in the 25th minute and then Diwakar converted their first penalty corner in the 28th minute to make the score 6-0. Thereafter, Western replaced goalkeeper Saurabh with Naresh Choudhary.
A demoralised Western managed to pull on back when Jaykaran capitalised on an open chance in the 33rd minute.
After switching ends ONGC added two more goals through Sumit Kumar’s field effort in the 42nd minute and Jayanta’s penalty corner strike in the 57th minute.
Later in the evening, Gurpreet Singh fired in a hat-trick to power Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) to comfortable 6-1 win against qualifiers Union Bank of India in a Pool-A match. While Gurpreet converted three penalty corners his teammates Tushar Khandekar, Hari Prasad and Ravi Pal scored a goal each from field efforts. Vikram Singh scored the lone goal for the bankers.
Results – Pool-B: Indian Oil 6 (Sunil Yadav 30th, 69th, Pradhan Somanna 37th, 54th, Prabhjot Singh 45th, Deepak Thakur 64th) beat Northern Railway 1 (Shamsher 68th).
Pool-A: ONGC 8 (P.P. Macheiah 14th, 23rd, 24th, Mandeep Antil 20th , Amit Malik 25th, Diwakar Ram 28th, Sumit Kumar 42nd, K.H. Jayanta 57th) beat Western Railway 1 (Jaykaran 33rd).