Most of the matches in Hockey India’s second senior national championships, which got off on Sunday, were lop-sided affairs with the winning teams slamming goals galore.
Rajasthan set the ball rolling with a 6-1 drubbing of Nagaland in the morning with striker Naresh slamming three field goals with Jaigham too making the most of a move to add to the tally. Harpreet Singh then converted a short corner before an own goal boosted their tally. Neduneizo managed to reduce the margin. Arunachal got a walkover as Chhattisgarh failed to turn up.
Puducherry scored a surprise 7-2 victory over Maharashtra as Kamala Kannan banged home four goals including a penalty stroke conversion. Jayaraj added two field goals and Karthikeyan one to complete the tally as Irshad Mirza scored off a short corner and Vijay Thapa off a move in the centre to pull back two goals but to no avail.
Punjab recorded the biggest taly of the day with a 12-1 hammering of the hapless Jammu & Kashmir. Talwinder Singh led the scoring with three strikes followed by Sarvanjit Singh (2), Prabhdeep Singh (2), Gurjinder Singh, Vikramjit Singh, Ravipal Singh and Akashdeep Singh a goal each. Punjab scored an own goal to give some compensation to J&K for taking the trouble of coming all the way.
Kerala took the cue and slammed 11 past Gujarat with Muhammed Murthla notching up four goals and Sarin E three while Vishnu (2), Adarse and Joshan George scored one each.
Some sanity was restored as Tamil Nadu and Odisha played out a 2-2 draw with Mikhal Barla adding a field goal to Amit Rohidas’ penalty corner conversion for Odisha while Rupinderpal Singh converted two short corners to level scores for TN.
Holders Harayana downed Bhopal 2-1 as Didar Singh and Mandeep Antil were bang on target with their attempts while Affan Yusuf pulled one back for the losers.