Mumbai's boys and girls' teams bowed out of the 35th Junior (under-20) National Hockey Championships in contrasting fashion on Saturday.
In the tournament, being organised by the Pune District Hockey Association, in association with the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation, under the auspices of the Indian Hockey Federation, the Mumbai boys went down fighting to a plucky Karnataka 1-2 in a pre-quarter-final match while the girls were squarely beaten 6-1 by Punjab in a quarter-final, played at the Major Dhyanchand ground, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Nehrunagar.
Mumbai paid dearly for not capitalizing on the chances that came their way and conceding two soft goals. They did well to take the lead, when penalty-corner specialist Narad Bahadur converted a penalty-corner in the 19th minute. However, their joy was short-lived as Karnataka pulled a goal back through Bopanna C V in the 22nd minute before Vinayak K Bijwad made the most of a defensive lapse to snatch the winner in the 40th minute.
Mumbai went all out in search of the equaliser and even earned a couple of penalty-corners but without success.
Earlier, the girls were unable to match the performance of the Punjab outfit and surrender meekly.
In the morning, the Delhi lads also paid the price for their prodigality in front of the goal as they went down fighting 3-4 to Uttar Pradesh in another pre-quarter-final encounter.
Results:
Girls' quarter-finals: Haryana 4 (Navneet 32nd, 60th, 63rd, Raman 62nd) bt Karnataka 2 (Chaitra 36th, Saina Banu 58th).
Punjab 6 (Veerpal Kaur 2 - 52nd, 60th, Sandeep Kaur 15th, Paramjit kaur 32nd, Shikkar Bisht 48th, Ramandeep Kaur 49th) bt Mumbai 1 (Naomi Monteiro 37th).
Boys' pre-quarter-finals: Haryana 12 (Sidhant Gautam 2- 5th, 31st, Ajay Sharma 2 â 15th, 19th, Naveen Sangwan 2 - 39th, 44th, Hansraj 2-52nd, 67th, Dharmendra Bhagwan 2 - 34th, 42nd, Naveen Grewal 28th, Munish Rana 21) bt Outer Districts 1 (Samir Bhusale 34th).
Indian Oil Corporation 7 (Sanklap Raghav 18th, Sukhdev Singh 24th, Ramandeep Singh 34th, Gagandeep Singh 46th, Chandan Singh 50th, Sampath Kumar 58th, Nijanthan M 67th) bt Tamil Nadu 2 (Albert John 61st, Sevakumar N 63rd).
Uttar Pradesh 4 (Mohd Javed 12th, 66th, Abhishek Singh 5th, Sunil Shouker 13th) bt Delhi 3 (Mohit 44th, Amit Louchab 50th, Rocky Louchab 68th).
Karnataka 2 (Bopanna C V 22nd, Vinayak K Bijwad 40th) bt Mumbai 1 (Narad Bahadur 19th).
