Displaying sheer grit and inflexible fortitude Tata Football Academy (TFA) won a hard-fought victory over State Bank of Travancore (SBT), 2-1, in the knock-out match to qualify for the quarterfinals of the Durand Cup at the Ambedkar Stadium in New Delhi on Tuesday afternoon. It was a do-or-die match for both the teams and so they went into offensive right from the word go and began making forays into each other's territory. TFA lads in particular made no bones in troubling rival defenders with their short passes. Playing in a 4-4-3 combination TFA launched a series of attacks on the opposition half and or a couple of times were successful in dodging their way to the penalty box area, but sbt defenders negated these attempts with ease. TFA fired the first salvo in the 27th minute when outside left Akbar Singh intercepted a SBT pass and lobbed it to right half Malsum Thunga who again passed it to advancing centre forward Subhash Chakraborty inside the penalty box and Chakraborty very adroitly placed the ball into the goal to make the score 1-0. This goal galvanised SBT into action and the team began playing through long passes to draw optimum advantage of their height. The equaliser came in the 35th minute when SBT right back Jiju Jacob gave a long pass to outside left Asif Saheer. Saheer on sensing that he was being pursued, lobbed the ball over the head of a TFA defender to Centre forward V P Shaji inside the rival penalty box whose powerful swerving right-footer hit the net to make the score 1-1. Bureau Report