Namdhari, S C Railway advance

Haryana's Namdhari XI and South Central Railway, Secunderabad, knocked out top local outfits Central Railway and Indian Navy by identical 2-1 margins in the 44th Bombay Gold Cup hockey tournament in Mumbai on Wednesday.

Namdhari XI scored once in each half through Joga Singh and Gurpreet Singh to lead 2-0 in the 41st minute before Central Railway, whose key player Shamim Baig muffed two sitters, reduced the margin in the 52nd minute through Rashid Ali.

South Central Railway rallied from a first half deficit to score two goals in the first five minutes after resumption.

Navy, who squandered eight penalty-corners, took the lead in the 11th minute when Manoj Lokhande deflected home a pass from Amrit Kiro.

The railwaymen, for whom Nagaland-born goalkeeper R K Pfokrelo put up a superb display to repeatedly foil Navy's attempts in the second half, got their goals through Prabhakar Singh (37th) and K K Bharat (40th).

Prabhakar pushed home the rebound off Navy goalkeeper Kulu Ram's pads to equalise for South Central before doing the spadework with an excellent diagonal pass for K K Bharath to score the winner with a reverse hit.

In two other matches, Corps of Signals (Jalandhar) edged out Punjab State Electricity Board (Patiala) 5-4 via the tie- breaker while Bhopal XI pipped Combined SAI XI from Delhi 10-9, in a similar fashion after the teams were locked 4-4 at the end of regular time.