After a barren first half, Sunita opened the account scoring off a well-planned set-piece sequence six minutes into the second session and minutes before the close, centre forward Nishi Chouhan pushed in a rebound amidst threats of an equaliser from Manipur, which never materialised.

With two other weak teams in the pool Maharashtra and Mahakoshal unlikely to provide any challenge to either of these two, the quarter-final berth depended on the fate of this match and a victory was crucial for both Manipur and Chandigarh to move into the last eight. Not surprisingly, the match provided the spark missing in the earlier four matches that proved to be one-sided for the second consecutive day.

Goals continued to rain with as many as 41 being scoredin five matches.Karnataka exhibited a pleasing game to trounce lowly Himachal Pradesh 10-1, Punjab had shooting practice against Pondicherry (17-0), Delhi drubbed Jammu and Kashmir 6-0 and Vidarbha thrashed Rajasthan 5-0.

Punjab's total dominance of the match was capped by a fine hat-trick by Preetinder who scored in the ninth, tenth and 12th minutes and rounded off her dominance with her fourth goal in the 68th minute.

Results

Pool B: Vidarbha 5 (Shakuntala Khobragade 2, Sukhdevi Sandiya, Anu Bekla, Kalpana) bt Rajasthan 0. Pool C: Chandigarh 2 (Sunita Dalal, Nishi Chauhan) bt Manipur 0. Pool E: Punjab 17 (Preetinder 4, Monika 3, Sarabjeet 3, Sumitra Minz 2, Rajwinder, Neelam Kumari, Amandeep, Sneh Bala, Merwinder 1 goal each) bt Pondicherry 0. Delhi 6 (Sushila Sharma 3, Sarita, Pooja, Neelam Sharma 1 goal each) bt Jammu & Kashmir 0. Pool F: Karnataka 10 (Rohini 5, Christy Elena 2, Bindiya, Kumari, Swetha one goal each) bt Himachal Pradesh 1 (Neeta)