Down to 10 men for the second half, Dabang Mumbai secured their first victory in Hockey India League-4 with a thrilling 7-5 win over table toppers and defending champions Ranchi Rays here on Wednesday
Down to 10 men for the second half, Dabang Mumbai secured their first victory in Hockey India League-4 with a thrilling 7-5 win over table toppers and defending champions Ranchi Rays here on Wednesday.
Making light of the red card shown to forward Affan Yousuf at the fag end of the second quarter, Mumbai produced top-drawer stuff to stun Ranchi with a spirited display that stopped the visitors’ four-game winning streak.
Led brilliantly by Australian captain and schemer Matthew Swann, Mumbai scored three field goals through Swann, Nilakanta Sharma and Florian Fuchs after Diwakar Ram gave them an early lead with a penalty corner conversion.
For Ranchi, skipper Ashley Jackson scored twice off penalty corners along with Sandeep Singh while the other goal, a fine field effort, was notched by Sarvanjit Singh.
After a string of four losses, Mumbai were under pressure in the do-or-die game, but came out with flying colours in the opening quarter which they dominated and ended up with a 1-0 lead through a penalty corner strike by former India player Diwakar.
In the second quarter too, the home team had the upper hand though Ranchi slowly came back into the game and equalised off their first penalty corner, which was converted by Jackson (18th). Mumbai, however, surged ahead again through an opportunistic strike by captain Swann.
But Mumbai suffered a big blow when frontline player Affan was sent off for deliberately striking a rival defender just before the end of the first half.
Ranchi equalised through Sarvanjit in the 38th minute and then went ahead for the first time through another pe-nalty corner by Jackson.
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