Monday 30 July, 2007

WNS Juggernaut rolls on, enter semis


Photo: Anand Chaini
A WNS player battling for possession
B D Narayankar

bapun@sakalherald.com

PUNE: Savage, beastly or devilish. These words have all the potential to exact wrath from puritans. But there are some who die to watch devilish excitement on a field on any given day. The lucky few, who had gathered to watch the quarterfinal games of Second Inter-Corporate Football Mania 2007 here on Sunday, went home delighted taking back with them fond memories of these matches.

WNS N-Trance, in an unforgiving mood, mauled Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) by six stunning goals to storm into the semifinals. Other three teams that sailed into the last four round are Ventura, IBM and Wipro. While Ventura will play IBM in the first semifinals and Wipro against WNS N-Trance on Saturday next.

Sticking to their reputation of being capable of causing a major upset in the tournament, WNS came out all blazing in the big match. They oozed loads of confidence as soon as they took to the field. “We were determined to win. For things to happen, we first consolidated our position by playing safe for the first ten minutes and then going for the kill,” Allen Almeida told Maharashtra Herald after the match.

The player that made all the difference in the one-sided encounter was Baptist Lobo, who scored an hat-trick, all goals coming in second half of the game. Doni Mehta also joined the party after curving in the goal twice in the first dig.

Doni Mehta began the campaign for WNS when he curved in the ball past TCS goalkeeper 10 minutes into the game. He once again put his team in the lead 3-0 eight minutes after firing the first. Not far behind was Allen Almeida who joined the celebration by scoring the second goal in 15th minute.

Any side going into the interregnum with three goals behind them would make them feel proud. Such a feeling sometimes can make best of the teams complacent. This did not happen to WNS who began their ‘Mission Rout’ with added vengeance in the second half.

This half belonged to Baptist Lobo scoring a hat trick. He netted the ball thrice in 35th, 45th and 50th minutes of the game.

Meanwhile, Ventura trounced WNS 4-2 in penalty shootouts. Both teams were tied at 1-1 after the final whistle. In all their three attempts, Ventura players – Himanshu, Savio Sequeria and Sri Jagtap – did not fail to score goals.

On the flipside, Nivian, Ivan George and Savio D’Souza of WNS failed to convert penalty kick into goals, which resulted in their defeat.

RESULTS: Quaterfinals: WNS N-Trance 6 (Baptist Lobo 3, Doni Mehta 2, Allen Almeida bt TCS 0; IBM 3 (Varun Jaypal 2, Ramnath Vishvanathan) bt AXA 0; Wipro BPO 3 (Michael D’Cruz 3) bt Occeans Connect 0; Ventura 4 (Savio Sequiera 2, Himanshu, Sri Jagtap) bt WNS (Faizal Razzak, Viren D’Souza)

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