South Western Railway (SWR) rode on a good team performance to put it past Postal 20-25, 25-23, 25-22, 25-22 in the 19th State ‘A’ Division volleyball championship at the Sree Kanteerava stadium on Thursday.

SWR have four points from three matches with two wins and a loss while Postal crashed to their third defeat in four games, their only win coming against KSP, to remain on two points.

In the day’s second match, Sports Hostel defeated BEL 25-21, 25-18, 25-23.

Postal made a good start to the contest with Karthik SA and Lakshmi Narayan essaying some fine smashes. With a 12-10 lead, the Postal spikers put pressure on the SWR defence to nudge further ahead and take the set 25-20 with a combination of deft ball play and cracking smashes. 

 SWR, last year’s runner’s up, rose to the occasion in the second set. The Somnath Girigowda-led side were helped by Imtiaz Ahmed and Vinod’s co-ordinated effort that was missing in the first set. 

Imtiaz fired a couple of booming smashes as the Railwaymen stayed ahead of a fighting Postal outfit. Postal kept the game tight with Vinod Kumar and Karthik A producing winners at crucial junctures but SWR kept their nerve to pocket the set 25-23.

In the third set, Postal grabbed the early initiative with a 7-6 lead but the momentum kept swinging right through the set. At 21-all, either team could have claimed the set but SWR pushed ahead with Devadaram’s opportunistic smashes to seal the set 25-22. 

The Railwaymen were relatively more dominant in the fourth set to rack up a 7-3 lead with Imtiaz at the centre of their attacking display. Postal managed to cut the lead by a few points to keep the game interesting by reducing SWR’s six-point margin to just two points at 22-20.

But Mahesh and Harish garnered important points towards the end as SWR finished the game at 25-22.

Results: SWR bt Postal 20-25, 25-23, 25-22, 25-22; Sports Hostel bt BEL 25-21, 25-18, 25-23.