BANGALORE, JAN 13: There was only one team which scored the goals in the Indian Telephone Industries-Mahindras Group `B' National Football League encounter at the Bangalore Football Stadium on Wednesday. Mumbai side Mahindras, overcame a scrappy first session of play, during which they conceded a self goal, to score twice in the latter session and earn the full quota of three points.There was neither flair nor fluency in the display put up by the sides on a thoroughly bad day of football. Wrong passes were the order of the day with the players of both teams interested in giving away hard earned tackles to the rivals rather than finding their own teammates. And in the final analysis, the team which made the lesser number of mispasses - Mahindras in this case, won the match.It was a matter of irony when Mahindra defender Sushanta Mazumdar's intended clearance following a Bheema Rao (ITI) centre landed in his very own goal after an unimpressive 20 minutes in the match. Mazumdar, who was making his first appearance in the league was expected to shore up the Mahindra defence. Instead, he seemed to have done only damage to his side's morale with his `effort', which gave ITI a 1-0 lead at the interval.The Telephonemen would have certainly heaved a sigh of relief for the favour done by Mazumdar, for there was nothing noteworthy they themselves had done. Apart from the Bheema Rao move, which eventually led to their goal, there was only one other ITI thrust in the entire session. Aleksey Drobotov, who struggled to shrug off his markers throughout the match, beat the off-side trap to set up R C Prakash with a sizzling centre, but the latter failed to connect, when a mere touch either from his foot or head would have resulted in a goal.Drobotov tried to make amends to the struggle of his `local' teammates to combine with him by urging his countrymen - Kiril Keker and Sergey Kaliubin to join him in the attacks. But the trio's attempts failed to materialise against the stoic defence led by the seasoned Nigerian Bernard, who was the toughest nut to crack in the Mahindras' line-up.Mahindras, on their part, managed to earn a sole corner-kick right through the first 45 minutes of play.Change of ends brought about a change in the Mumbai side's attitude. With the Telephonemen continuing to ring the wrong numbers, Mahindras grew in strength scoring twice.First, with only five minutes gone in the session, ITI defender Rishi Kapoor brought down Manjit Singh rather unnecessarily in the penalty area prompting referee Sethumadhavan to point to the penalty spot. Shamshi Raza had no trouble in slotting the ball home to the right of ITI goalkeeper Balaji.That goal perked up the Mahindra front-liners. Manjit and Nigerian Loolo Nwike (who had come in for PJ Jose), moved well in tandem to the moves created by Santosh Kashyap (another substitute, coming in for the other Nigerian Adeshina Taslim). On one such occasion, in the 77th minute, Manjit made the best of a lackadaisical rival defence to slam home the match-winner for his side.Mahindras, now move on to Chennai to play Indian Bank on Sunday, while ITI stay on at home to play the mighty East Bengal on the same day.
