On the second day of the 19th Dr Babasheb Ambedkar Memorial Hockey tournament, Kolhapur `B', who registered a resounding 8-1 win over Bhandara Hockey Association in the morning, went down fighting to the Bombay Engineering Group, Kirkee, from Pune later in the evening. Commendable, however, was their spirit in playing both the matches in one day.

Two teams failed to turn up for the tournament and the KHA, failing to find a last minute replacement to fill the gap at the bottom of pool `A', were forced to reschedule the fixtures.

With this win BEG take on BHA Colts in the second round slated for tomorrow while Pune XI will look to open their campaign in the championship when they take on Tamil Nadu XI.

The Bombay Sappers lacked the aim in the approach in the encounter against Kolhapur `B' as, despite being close to the target, they failed to find the mark.

With Naman Bage, Ajit Lakra and P D Barla playing in the defence, centre and frontline respectively, the local lads found the going tough. Nevertheless, they won the battle but lost the war. There were some close shaves at the BEG goal, but luckily for them the ball just missed the target by inches. It was Vikas Jadhav and Sujit Nalavade who gave the BEG defence a tough time with fine ball control and stick work. Lady Luck, however, was not working in their favour.

The Bombay Sappers, however, did come up with some fine penalty corner conversions as they found the target twice of the four corners that they earned.

Sandeep Chande put them ahead in the sixth minute when he diverted Ajit Lakara's centre from the right flank. It was just this solitary goal which separated them and their rivals when they took the break.

In the 46th minute, Naman Bage converted their third penalty corner and later Sagar Thakkur put the game beyond the rivals reach tapping home Bage's try which came off Kolhapur's custodian Dhanjai Karwade's pad.

Vikas Bhandre scored the consolation goal for Kolhapur.

All the concepts of grading the teams went for a toss as Kolahpur `B' scored a resounding 8-1 win over Bhandara Hockey Association, after their `A' team were shown the exit door by Central Railways in the tournament opener yesterday.

Although the day witnessed teams not reporting for the matches, the Kolhapur `B' team made this town proud when they put up a convincing 8-1 verdict to score their first win in the contest.

``We never excepted such a good show from these boys. However, their two months of hard work have paid off,'' stated Kumar Agaonkar, the secretary of the Kolhapur Hockey association.

It was a display of fine team-work as the goal scoring was distributed among the six players, with Sujit Nalavade finding the net twice.

Goals were scored in the first 21 minutes and then in the last 13 minutes, with five in the first session and the remaining thereafter. And interestingly, there was no sign of urgency for the team to score more goals, but they made use of the rotational substitution effectively. A good strategy since they had to play another match later in the day.

There were neither wild cheers, nor applause when the hosts hit the target through Danaji Karwade and the next 20 minutes that followed saw them sitting pretty at 5-0 with goals coming off the sticks of Taher Shaikh (10th), Vishal Bandare (12th), Praveen Korde (17th) and Sujit Nalvade in the 20th minute of play.

Seven minutes after the break, the lads from Bhandara surprised their opponents netting a goal which came because of the defensive lapses of the Kolhapur defenders. Parishit Bhanvakar capitalised on the opportunity by pushing the ball pass the advanced keeper Arjun Bhadre.

However, this was the only time that the lads from Bhandara had any say in the match as Kolhapur `B' responded with three goals to silence their opponents. Rahul (57th), Amit Sakpal (63rd) and Sujit Nalvade netted the goals.