In a battle of two local outfits, Indian Navy showed sharper finish to notch up a narrow 4-3 win in Pool C of the 49th All India Bombay Gold Cup hockey tournament at the Mahindra Stadium here today.
The matches in the tournament are being played in the old, traditional format of two halves of 35 minutes each and not the revamped 60-minute, four-quarter format introduced from the Asian Games in Incheon.
Navy were 1-0 up at half time through a field goal by Amit Goswami and made it 2-0 eight minutes into the second half via a penalty corner strike by captain A K Kiro before former champions Western hit back to restore parity.
Goals from Western's Amit Rohidass, off a penalty corner in the 43rd minute of play and an opportunistic field goal scored by Malak Singh six minutes later made it 2-all and promised a stiff battle.
But Navy sealed the issue by pumping in two goals in quick succession.
Naveen Kumar deflected in a fine diagonal pass from Parteek Singh and Mohammed Faheem Khan doing likewise off a forward pass from Ved Prakash to help Navy take a commanding 4-2 lead.
Malak Singh pulled one back two minutes from the end with a tennis-like forehand shot off a rising ball to score his second goal of the game.
But it was Navy who had another chance to score as they forced a penalty corner with seconds to go which went waste.
ONGC are the third outfit in the pool.
Tomorrow, last year's runners-up Air India take on South Central Railway in Pool D while title holders Indian Oil clash with Maharashtra State Police in Pool A.
