The men have been separated from the boys and the women from the girls in the 27th Federation Cup basketball championships at the Sree Kanteerava Indoor Stadium. It’s holders Punjab Police vs Oil & Natural Gas Commission and Indian Air Force vs Indian Overseas Bank in the men’s semifinals. In the women’s last four clashes, defending champions South East Central Railway lock horns with Maharashtra while Tamil Nadu take on Kerala.
Punjab Police were the last team to make the grade. They did so with a nail-biting 63-61 victory over Central Excise and Customs, Kochi. It was a thriller all the way as the teams fought for every point, basket for basket, three pointer for a three pointer that had the crowd in raptures.
In fact the Punjab outfit trailed 26-28 at half time but staged a magnificent rally with Ranbir Singh (20), Palpreeth Singh (15) and Amritpal Singh (13) coming to their rescue eventually. In the morning, Punjab Police made short work of Bangalore challengers Vijaya Bank 72-61 after leading 37-30 at half time.
In another match, IAF produced another big scoring match defeating Central Excise, Kerala 92-82. Point guard Joginder Singh and flank man Praveen Kumar made 21 baskets each. Though Basil Philip was in fine form scoring 25 for the Kerala outfit, they fell far short.
South East Central Railway defeated Karnataka 73-55. It was the home team’s second defeat as they had lost to Delhi on Thursday night.
Scores
Men Group A: Punjab Police 72 (R Singh 22, A Singh 15, H Singh 10) bt Vijaya Bank 61 (Arvind 17, Srinivas Naik 17, Basavaraj 14) HT 37-30; IAF 92 (J Singh 21, P Kumar 21) bt Central Excise, Kerala, 82 (Basil Philip 25, Evbrixk 21, Manoj 14) HT 49-33; South Central Railway 87 (N kumar 33) bt Jind Dist Haryana 72 (Deepak 26, Praveen 25) HT 37-41; Captain Club Delhi 82 (P Dovan 34,Vinay Kaushik 23, D Nair 10) bt Vijaya Bank 72 (Arvind 25, A Kumar 18, R Thomas 14) HT 46-38; ONGC 58 (Bhruguwanshi 14, Y Singh 13, M Bhandari 11) bt IOB 51 (Mihir Pandey 18) HT 26-23; Punjab Police 63 (R Singh 20, Palpreeth Singh 15, A Singh 13) bt Central Excise Kerala 61 (Manoj 17, Basil 16, Perera 15) HT 26-28.
Women: Group A: Kerala 66 (S Nixon 20, Jeena 19, Poojamol 11) bt Delhi 42 (Raspreeth 29) HT 39-28; South East Central Railway 73 (Pushpa 27, Bharti 16, Aruna 14) bt Karnataka 55 (Savitha 13, Sagarika 12) HT 35-27; Group B: Tamil Nadu 72 (Adhiri 19, Anitha 16, Rajapriya Darshini 13) bt Maharashtra 43 (Radhakrishnan 13) HT 36-28; South EC Railway 64 (Pushpa 14, Akanksha 13, Bharthi 12) bt Delhi 38 (Neha 8) HT 31-22; Chhatisgarh 69 (Sangeetha 17, Saranjeeth 16) bt AP 32 (Sravanthi 13) HT 39-18.