Debutants Fortis began their Super Division hockey league campaign holding Central Excise to a 1-1 draw in a Tier II encounter at the KSHA stadium here on Tuesday.

In a match in which they had the upperhand for most of the time, Excisemen did everything except finishing against an experimental side which was a consortium of top club players.

Led by the mercurial Sandeep Michael and coached by Olympian Ashish Ballal, Fortis began on a good note and it didn’t come as a surprise when they took the lead.

It was Sandeep who opened the account in the eighth minute with an attacking move, which fetched a penalty corner, after his former SAI colleague Navaneshwaran came in the way. Virendra Lakra took the strike, Sandeep stopped the ball and relayed it to Kulbushan who sounded the board with ease.

However, Fortis’ joy was shortlived as the Excisemen drew level in the 19th minute through skipper Anup Anthony who tapped the ball in after connecting a long relay from Kishore from the right flank.

Defensive mode

With the scores tied, both the teams went into a defensive mode as the score remained unchanged till the breather and the plot was not much different when it resumed. Central Excise did make a couple of good attacking moves but failed to provide finishing touches.

Fortis too struggled with most of their players looking worn out. Damandeep Singh, who was part of the Indian squad in the Champions Challenge at Boom, did make some forays into the opposition terittory, but lacked the required support from his team-mates.

Earlier, Rajesh scored a hat-trick (56th, 61st, 66th) in HAL’s 3-2 comeback win over IAF. IAF had taken the lead through Manoj’s brace (11th, 22nd). Meanwhile, the tournament authorities have sought an explanation from MEG for staging a walkout from their match against SAI and have served a show cause notice on MEG player Samson Fernandes for abusing and punching umpire Hardeep Singh.