An excellent hat-trick from captain Himanshi Gawande helped Hockey Maharashtra thrash Delhi Hockey and storm into the quarter-finals in style of the ongoing 13th Hockey India Junior Women National Championship under way at Rourkela in Odisha. In their last league match Maharashtra drubbed Delhi 6-2 to make quarter-finals topping Pool D.

Maharashtra topped Pool D with two wins from as many games and secured six points. They will now meet formidable Madhya Pradesh in the quarter-finals to be played on Tuesday morning. Captain Gawande led from the front as she put Maharashtra ahead in the fifth minute of play. A slender lead of one goal was only success for Maharashtra in the first quarter of the match.

 

In the next 15 minutes Khushi Jasbir made it 2-0 for Maharashtra but Delhi managed to find the back of the net scoring their first goal in the 24th minute. Two minutes before the half-time Nagpur’s Gawande made it 3-1 for Maharashtra as they started dominating the game. After change of ends, Maharashtra girls displayed attacking game and within three minutes into the second half, Gawande completed her hat-trick as she sounded the board to make it 4-1 in Maharashtra’s favour.

 

A couple of minutes later, Sanika Mane found gap in Delhi defence and slapped the ball into the board to make it 5-1. Delhi got an opportunity to pull one back when Subham scored a goal in the 40th minute of play. Maharshtra kept playing their attacking game and succeeded in scoring their sixth goal through (50th) to record a resounding win. Madhya Pradesh, whom Maharashtra will face in the last eight game, are high confidence with three wins from as many games scoring 52 goals against one. They drubbed Puducherry 25-0, thrashed Jammu and Kashmir 21-0 and beat Karnataka 7-1 to top Pool E.