Indian Oil, playing without their star forward Deepak Thakur, managed to derail Western Railway 2-1 in the second leg semi-final of the 41st Bombay Gold Cup hockey tournament at the Mahindra stadium in Mumbai on Monday.
Following a 1-0 victory in the first leg semi-final on Friday, they earned a place in the final, where they will take on Indian Airlines, who crushed Karnataka 6-1, after leading 3-1 at the breather, in their second leg semi-final.
Indian Airlines had beaten Karnataka 4-2 in the first leg semi-final on Saturday.
Indian Oil and Western Railway were level 1-1 at half-time. It was Indian Oil who took the lead when their forward Mohammed Nawaz scored a field goal in the seventh minute.
With just three minutes to go for lemon time, Western Railway equalised when Ingo Singh scored off K S B Shanta Kumar's pass.
Though both the teams fought tooth and nail for the match-winner, it was only in the 65th minute that Indian Oil managed to score when Hamza Mujtaba finished off on a Mohammed Nawas pass after Western Railway were reduced to ten players as their defender Sunil Kumar was suspended in the 64th minute for rough play.
Indian Oil's Viren Rasquinha was also shown the yellow card for rough play in the 48th minute while their custodian Devesh Chauhan, defenders Bikramjeet Singh and Sunil Yadav and forward Nitin Kumar were cautioned with green cards.
Indian Oil forced just two penalty-corners while Western Railway got four.
India skipper Dhanraj Pillay scored a brace in Indian Airlines' big win. He drew first blood in the fourth minute with a field goal. Nine minutes later IA defender and another international Dilip Tirkey converted the second penalty-corner to increase the lead.
Karnataka pulled one back in the 25th minute when forward Birender Lakra scored off skipper Rama Rao pass.
With a minute to go for half-time, Arjun Halappa converted Airlines' third penalty-corner to make it 3-1.
Four minutes after half-time, Prabodh Tirkey converted the team's fourth penalty corner to make it 4-1 and another international, Sameer Dad, made it 5-1 with a field goal before the mercurial forward Pillay rounded off the tally with just 63 seconds to go for the final hooter.
Karnataka forced as many as eighth penalty corners but failed to convert any of them while Indian Airlines converted three of the four they got.
