QUILON, Kerala: It took 120 minutes of play and 12 penalty kicks for Punjab to emerge winners of the 44th Santosh Trophy Football Championship at the Lal Bahadur Stadium here.
The match ended goalless after 90 minutes of play and 30 minutes of extra time, taking it to a tiebreaker and the to “sudden death”.
Punjab claimed the trophy for the sixth time, beating Kerala by five goals to four.
Kerala were awarded the Kamala Gupta Trophy for being the runners up.
‘The teams were not willing to take any risks and fielded their first eleven. Kerala also brought back number one keeper KT. Chacko in place of the nervous Sreen harshan. With the speedy Thomas Sebastian and Wily Pappachan making dents into the Punjab defense past the slow moving Parmar and Walia and linkman Sathyan for once getting into his groove, Kerala appeared to have a slight edge over the proceedings at the start. With both sides going in for rough tackle, play became hit an drum stuff after the interval, Punjab’s Parminder initiated a move from near the center line and passed to Darbara Singh, from whose cross substitute Surinder Kumar missed a sitter by shooting wide.
Punjab had by now steadied their defense and the Kerala attackers failed to move in as they had in the first session.
With 30 minutes of extra time also proving fruitless, the match went into the tiebreaker and then to sudden death,
In the tiebreaker, of the first five tries, Kerala’s Cherian Perumali, Sathyan, Ganesh and Sheraf also scored while Cletus’ try was saved. For Punjab Parmar, Jagmohan Singh, Deepak Kumar and Awater Singh were successful and Parminder’s shot was saved. In sudden death, Kurikesh Mathew missed and Dhanwant converted,
“It is a magnificent performance by our team, which has successfully avenged its defeat at the hands of Kerala in the National Games last year. The Punjab Olympic Association is proud of the superb performances given by the team, Mr. Dhindsa said to the captain of the team, Paramjit Walia,
PHILADELPHIA, Reuter: Kenyan Charles Cheruiyot passed countryman Peter Ronin the final 10 meters to win a tactical 1,500 meter run in three minutes, 44, 00 seconds on Saturday at the Penn relays athletics meet.
Rono was less than a step behind in 3:44.04,
Article extracted from this publication >> May 6, 1988
