NFL: HAL shock Mahindra United

BANGALORE, April 18: Hindustan Aeronautics Limited would like to believe that miracles do happen. The Bangalore outfit certainly pulled one out of the bag on Wednesday when they handed defending champions and table leaders Mahindra United a 1-0 defeat in the National Football League.
Satish Kumar, sparingly used this season for reasons quite unknown, thumped in the winner in the second of four tumultuous minutes of injury time added on.
The goal left Mahindra stranded on 26 points and gave Dempo (23 points) a chance to draw level. Should Armando Colaco's outfit defeat Churchill Brothers on the morrow, the race to the title could well go right down to the wire.
For HAL, the victory means nothing more than a little more pride. They take their tally to 10 points from 14 matches but it still leaves them right at the bottom of the table.
Should they hope to stay in the top division of the league — and should the format remain unchanged in the coming season — then they would have to win their final four matches and hope some of the other results go their way too.
HAL finally seemed to have got their combination right — the only sore point being Rajendra Prasad, who could well go down in the annals of Karnataka football as the greatest waster ever. The two Nigerian defenders, Alesh Shamaki and Joseph Femi Adeola, looked impregnable, while wing defender Pawan Kumar rallied nicely.
Central midfielder Murali and Kuttymani looked a little off colour, but HAL got away without having to pay for their tardiness. Perhaps it was due to the fact that the 'niggling' injury to Mahindra skipper Yusif Yakubu was a little more serious than perceived.
Playing at half throttle, Yakubu could also have been the reason for Mahindra looking far less menacing than the team they are.
JCT beat Air India 3-0
Ludhiana: A brace by Edeh Chidi helped local favourites JCT beat Air India Mumbai 3-0 at the Guru Nanak stadium on Tuesday. The winners were leading 1-0 at half time. Chidi scored once on either side of the break before Sunil Chhetri added the third to earn JCT full points.
With this victory JCT now have 23 points while Mumbai's Air India remained at the sixth place with 17 points.