Olympian goalkeeper Ashish Ballal stood between Central Railway and victory as fancied Indian Airlines flew into the semi-finals, with a 4-2 win via the tie-breaker, in the DCM Shriram hockey tournament in Kota on Thursday.
In a thrilling quarter-final, played before capacitry crowd, Indian Airlines, spearheaded by the versatile Dhanraj Pillay, dominated the procedings but could not dent the solid defence of Central Railway.
After a goalless first-half, Airlines struck when Arjun Hallapa made no mistake in converting a penalty-stroke (1-0).
However, the railwaymen fought back and drew parity when Dhreej scored off the third penalty-corner (1-1).
As both the teams were locked 1-1 at the end of full-time, the tie-breaker was enforced.
Ballal brought off two superb saves which enabled Airlines to emerge victorious by a 4-2 margin.
For Airlines, Mohammad Riaz, Mukesh Kumar and Arjun Hallapa converted the strokes. Mehraz converted the only stroke for the losers.