Gurgaon: Punjab broke a two-decade long title drought by winning their seventh Santosh Trophy with a thrilling 5-3 defeat of Bengal in penalty shootout in Gurgaon on Wednesday.
Parveen Kumar, Jaspal Singh, Narinder Singh, Daljit Singh and Harpreet Singh were on target for Punjab during the spotkicks while Suman Dutta was the unfortunate player to miss out for Bengal.
Dipendu Biswas, Sanjeev Maria and Shyam Mondal were successful in their attempts.
Punjab were the better team in the first half and did most of the attacking. They were quicker off the blocks and displayed better cohesion.
They got a free-kick outside the Bengal box in only the second minute, but Shivraj Singh failed to trouble Bengal's third choice custodian Abhra Mondal, who started between the posts as Kalyan Choubey failed to shake off his ankle injury.
Punjab's star striker Parveen Kumar was continuously troubling the defenders and showed good skills in the eighth minute to go past a couple of defenders before he was unfairly brought down.
Parveen then squandered a golden opportunity when he got at the end of a teasing cross from Daljit Singh only to miss the target with his unchallenged header.
Punjab's lively midfielder Baldeep Singh was very active down the wing and the young Amrinder Singh, who is thought very highly of by coach Jagir Singh, displayed his potential and made the loss of their talisman Manjit Singh look manageable.
Bengal's first meaningful attempt came in the 22nd minute when skipper Dipendu Biswas dribbled past two defenders in the penalty area before being crowded out.
The Punjab back line was not giving much joy to the Bengal forwards as the team from the eastern state was mostly restricted to their own half with only Syed Rahim Nabi left to run in the opposition half.
In the 32nd minute, Parveen again got behind the Bengal defence and only a last ditch tackle by Shyam Mondal saved the day.
Bengal started the second half with a snap shot from outside the box from Avinash Thapa which was tipped over the bar by Kameshwar Singh.
But they looked edgy at the back and their lack of co-ordination would not have filled their rookie goalkeeper with confidence. Their attack also lacked conviction.
However, for all the dominance exerted by Punjab, they failed to seriously test Abhra Mondal.
Dipendu tried to make things happen in the 70th minute when he showed good ball control in the opposition penalty area, but he delayed his shot resulting in the chance going waste.
Soon after Jaswinder got on the wings and floated a good cross but Parveen could not take advantage.
Bengal were throwing more men forward but the Punjab defence was holding firm. Dipendu floated a chip in the penalty area but Saumik Dey failed to make good contact.
The Bengal skipper was starting to run the show and his beautiful through ball just eluded the slow Nabi.
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