Punjab XI on course to reach last four

Punjab XI enhanced their chances of making the semi final of the 88th MCC-Murugappa Hockey tournament when they thrashed local outfit Indian Bank 7-0 in their penultimate league match at the Mayor Radhakrishnan stadium here today.
Later, in a Group-A tie, joint winners and title contenders Indian Oil Corporation thrived on a hat-trick by Didar Singh to quell the challenge of debutants Steel Authority of India, Rourkela 5-2.
Both IOC and Punjab have so far maintained clean slate in different groups and have a match to go in the tournament.
Their positions in the groups would be decided when Punjab plays Air India and IOC take on Army XI.

A win for Air India would help Punjab make the cut tomorrow itself otherwise they have to wait for the outcome of Air India's match against Bharat Petroleum on Thursday.
IOC also faces the same fate as Indian Overseas Bank too have won three matches and if they lose against Army tomorrow, it will develop a three way tie but IOC would still scrape through to semi finals on better goal averages.
As for the matches today, IOC was helped by a brace of goals by Deepak Thakur (23rd minute and 57th minute) apart from Didar's (34th, 35th and 67th) goals. For SAIL, Mayank James (18th) and M G Poonacha (48th) were the scorers.

Punjab was helped by Jitender Saroha (13th and 28th), Hardeep (16th), Satpal Singh (46th), Jalwinder Singh (63th) and Ajitesh (69th and 70th).