Last year's champions Indian Oil swamped Maharashtra State Police 12-2 after losing finalists Air India surprisingly drew their Pool A match against South Central Railway 4-4 in the 49th Bombay Gold Cup hockey tournament here today.
The oilmen, beefed up in defence by Australia-returned full back and penalty corner expert V Raghunath, crushed the state police team after leading 5-2 at half time.
The winners rode roughshod over their rivals once Gurjinder Singh scored off their opening penalty corner in the 3rd minute, their speedy runs, wing to wing passing and sharpness inside the 'D' ripping apart the policemen defence.
Former international Roshan Minz top-scored with four goals for the oilmen while veteran forward Prabjot Singh found the mark on three occasions.
Hamza Mujtaba scored a brace of field goals while Gurjinder added one more to his first half penalty corner goal before Sunil Yadav rounded off the tally by scoring the Indian Oil's third and last set-piece goal.
Mukund Rajput and Vinod Manugade scored the goals for the losers.
Indian Oil take on Army XI tomorrow in their last league game.
Earlier, AI were sitting pretty with a two-goal lead at half time in their Pool D game against South Central Railway before the latter hit back to score four goals on the trot and take a 4-2 lead.
AI made a determined effort to come back into the match and not only reduced the lead but also scored the equaliser with six minutes left on the clock.
AI's goal getters were Shivendra Singh, captain Prabodh Tirkey, Gaganpreet Singh and B K Aiyaappa.
For SCR, tall sharp shooter Mayank James showed good opportunism by scoring three goals while the fourth goal came off a penalty corner strike by Innocent Kullu.
But SCR have no chance to progress into the semis, having lost to Central Railway on Sunday. The game between AI and Central, on November 13, would decide who makes it to the last four from this pool.
