JCT ready to challenge East Bengal

For more reasons than one, the match between Kingfisher East Bengal and JagajitCotton Mills proposes to be an action-packed thriller when the ONGC Cup Nationalfootball league comes rolling to this bustling town for the first time onThursday. What could have been a mini duel between two of theleague's second highest scorer thus far -- East Bengal's Bhaichung Bhutia andJCT's in-form forward Praveen Kumar -- has however given way to greater battlebetween the teams at hand as the latter misses the tie after to yellow cardsagainst his name. Sunil Chetri instead will have a start in the veteranPraveen's place.However, the significant bit is the fact that afterfive inconsistent home matches where East Bengal have won only two and were heldin three uninspiring matches, they travel for the first time. But that hardlyseemed a sore in team's new Belgian coach's eye. "We have a good team who isplaying well and the ground conditions here (the Guru Nanak Stadium) seem betterthan even our home ground" Phillipe Inde Ridder told TOI, echoing the assessmentmade by team's top striker, Bhutia earlier during an evening practice when thered and gold brigade rehearsed set piece movements.However the only cause ofconcern for the team is a burgeoning list of casualties through either injuriesor inevitable circumstances like that of striker Mike Okoro's absence. Okoro,apparently, has been called by his advocate back to Poland to ensure that hisnew citizenship papers are in order. Now that the deadly combine of Bhutia andOkoro is broken, young Rahim Nabi may have a look in to spoil the party of thehosts, who themselves have consistently taken first half leads in the five awaymatches, only sadly to squander them in dying minutes.On the otherhand, JCT riding high on their valued away win against Mohun Bagan, play theirfirst home match. MohunBagan coach Jahar Das' promised experimentation with tactics were basically toprotect one point. They drew goalless against Sporting clube de Goa in an NFLmatch at Fatorda on Wednesday.Mohun Bagan started with a 5-4-1combination with Ibrahim being the only striker. There was no way Sporting Clubewere scoring. Nay, there was no way, Sporting Clube were getting an opening too.If they had to score it had to be from a mistake from defender and BrazilianEduardo nearly presented Omagbemi Macpherlin with one.Sporting nowlead the table with 11 points while Mohun Bagan have earned their second drawfrom their Goa trip. ( )