Winning start for Madhya Pradesh Hockey Academy

Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh Hockey Academy women began the defence of their title with 2-1 win over Chandigarh in the Hockey India Sub-Junior Men & Women National Championship, here on Wednesday.

MPHA opened scoring through Neelu in the third minute while Preeti Dubey scored the other goal in the 19th minute. Saroj scored the only goal for Chandigarh in the 17th minute in the Pool A match at Aish Bagh Hockey Stadium. In Pool B, Haryana registered a 13-0 win over Andhra Pradesh. Haryana scored through Udita (1, 39 min), Navpreet Kaur (10, 61 min), Reet (17 min), Navneet Kaur (31, 38, 57 min), Ritu (22 min), Pooja (34 min), Nancy (62 min), Sonika (65 min) and Manpreet (68 min). In another Pool B match, Jharkhand beat The Hockey Maharashtra 7-1. Jharkhand scored through Kanti Pradhan (2, 26 min), Promila Soreng (8, 21 min), Priyanka Topno (33 min), Supriya Mundu (50 min) and Own Goal (60 min) while The Hockey Maharashtra scored their only goal through Nisha Rani (39 min). In the men’s category, defending champion Odisha drew 4-4 against Jharkhand in the Pool A match. Goal scorers for Odisha were Sudhir Mundu (9 min), Mahendra Toppo (51 min), Amit (54 min) and Jospeh Nag (65 min) while Nitin Mukesh (16 min), Sujar Minz (40 min), Amit (70 min) and an Own Goal (12 min) helped Jharkhand to level the score. In the other match of Pool A, The Hockey Maharashtra defeated Karnataka 3-1. Sumit Prasad scored two goals for The Hockey Maharashtra (2, 28 min) and Aniket Gaurav (55 min) while Shashi Dung Dung scored the only goal for Karnataka (27 min). PTI