All India Inter-YMCA Basketball title up for grabs with 17 teams vying for the cup

The pace at Don Bosco’s Fr Benedict Furtado Memorial indoor basketball stadium picked up on Day Two with the 17 teams vying for the All-India Inter-YMCA Basketball title intensifying the competition for the four semi-final slots at stake through the league stage.

Pallakkad YMCA notched up their second win of the tournament with a determined showing against Coimbatore YMCA. The final score-line read 71-58 and the winners earned leads in the first two quarters to be up by a clear 10 points (38-28) at half time. But Coimbatore came back strongly in the third quarter and seemed poised to snatch victory from their opponents. They took the third quarter and cut the deficit by three points but unfortunately, they failed to carry the momentum forward into the final quarter and ended up on the losing side.

Shinto was the star of Pallakkad’s play accounting for nearly half his team score with 34 points. B Jose and Dinesh Anand chipped in with valuable contributions. For Coimbatore, Joshua (15), Muzammil (14) and Sivasankar (12) did most of the scoring.

Later in the day, Pallakkad YMCA, seemed to have lost their rhythm and lost their next match to Poona YMCA without much of a fight. The Poona lads, with some accurate long-range shooting interspersed with fast-paced offensive play outplayed them 93-64. The Irani brothers – Rashid (25 points) and Sarfaraz (16 points) – were the Poona side’s mainstay. Shinto (24 pts) and B Jose (18 pts) were the only player s in Pallakkad’s line-up who displayed some consistency.

Other results:
Bombay YMCA ‘B’ defeated Bareilly YMCA 59-21 (Javed Shaikh scored 14 pts for Bombay YMCA while Sunail Khan netted a dozen for Bareilly)

YMCA’s Phy Ed College, Chennai defeated Fort-Cochin YMCA 86-33 (Shridar scored 24 pts and Moonakshi scored 23 pts for Chennai while Nibin scored 11 points for Fort-Cochin)
Calcutta YMCA defeated Hyderabad YMCA 103-77 (H Khatri scored 29 pts, Dennis Osta scored 19 pts and Tenzing Bhutia scored 18 pts for Calcutta. For Hyderabad Thirupathi score 33 pts and Gopi scored 15 pts)