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It's a mighty upset. Ninjas beat the Atoms to throw open title race.

13 January, 2002 (Round - 8)

Yes! It's finally happened. The 'mighty' winning streak of the Mighty Atoms that lasted two months and two days finally came to an end when the Little Ninjas beat them 3-1. Sidharth Khanna with a penalty and Rahul Sharma, playing in his new role as striker slid the ball in to make it two nil before Pratap Atwal pulled one back. But Dheeraj Dalal coming up from the back for a corner struck the third for the Ninjas much to his own astonishment.

Ninjas were in Red Hot form against the Atoms

The Lightning Strikers have been having a bad run lately but they are a better team than their current scores suggest. And today they proved it when they beat the Super Cubs 4-1. Ashwin Hoon, who played in midfield today instead of goal and Karan Dev Verman got a goal each while Palash Joshi got two. For the Cubs it was Shaunak Kumar who scored for them again.

Team Tigers and the Happy Hawks squared off in the third game of the day and Nikhil Narain scored to give the Hawks an early lead. But it was short lived as Sanjan Sabherwal equalised. Stung by the goal, the Hawks upped the tempo and went into a 4-1 lead with Narain hitting three more, one of them a penalty. It looked over for the Tigers at half time. But they came out firing and Ishaan Khosla scored twice to bring them back into the game and have the Hawks clinging on in the end for a 4-3 victory.

The most mouth-watering fixture of the day was the Ten Hurricanes verses the Red Hot Suns. The corresponding fixture in November was a thriller, which finished five all. This one was no less exciting. The Suns were missing four players but what a fight they made of it.

The Hurricanes striker, Nikhil Ledlie put them into the lead but Raghav Bhasin equalized. Ledlie again burst through and put the Hurricanes in the lead only for Gautam Anand to pull it back to 2-2. This time Vidur Bharatram put the Hurricanes up at 3-2 but Bhasin and Anand were running their socks off by now for the Suns and they each scored to put the Suns ahead for the first time at 4-3.

As the game got into the last quarter, Ledlie was starting to make some dazzling runs at the Suns defence but they held firm. Finally tiredness got to them and he broke through twice to put the Hurricanes in front again. The Suns still had not given up and in one last surge Raghav Bhasin shot wide and the Hurricanes came away with a 5-4 win.

So what a day of football it was. The Lightning Strikers won a game in a long time. The Hawks stopped the Tigers from making an amazing comeback. The Suns and the Hurricanes played another amazing thriller, and the Ninjas beat the Atoms to throw the title race wide open.