The speedy centre-forward, Dad, was in his elements today and he along with international Mukesh Kumar and Shakeel Ahmed functioned like a cohesive unit.Dad opened the account for his team in the 30th minute with a superb reverse flick off a Mukesh pass from left flank.

He increased the margin, in the 44th minute, when his push off the second attempt found the mark from Altaf's pass. Right-back Mohammad Riaz had earlier initiated the move.

Two minutes later Tamil Nadu opened their account through forward Vinod Kumar's field goal.

Dadgot his hat-trick when he sounded the board in the 52nd minute off Riaz's indirect pass following a penalty corner push taken by Shakeel Ahmed.Riaz himself was in the limelight, four minutes later, when he converted a penalty stroke after umpire Shakil Qureshi had awarded a stroke in favour of the airmen. Tamil Nadu's Dinesh Nayak had obstructed Mukesh when the later was poised to score resulting in the stroke.

Indian Airlines forced as many as four penalty corners but managed to score off just one while their rivals fared even worse wasting all the four penalty corners they earned.

Star-studded Airlines played to their potential, always putting their opponents under pressure with repeated raids.

The champions did not feel the absence of their star forward, Brojen Singh, who was given a one-match suspension by the tournament director Mohammed Ghouse for his unsportsman like behaviour in the semi-finals against Railways yesterday.

The aggressive approach by the Airmen pushed Tamil Nadu to go on thedefensive in the early part of the match from which they never recovered.Tamil Nadu's defensive approach in fact helped the speedy Airline forwards to move upfront at will and the danger of conceeding goals must have weighed heavily as the Tamil Nadu defence was in shambles.

Infact the Tamil Nadu defenders found it very difficult to mark the agile Dad and the speedy Mukesh. Though Tamil Nadu fought back to reduce the margin in the 46th minute they could not stop their much fitter and faster rivals from winning 4-1.

Teams

Indian Airlines: Jagdish Ponnappa (Rajneesh), Dilip Tirkey, Sanjay Bist (Shakeel Ahmed), Lazrus Barla, Mukesh Kumar, Mohammed Riaz, Altaf-ur-Rehman, Sameer Dad, RS Rawat RP Singh and Ashish Ballal.

Tamil Nadu: Natrajan, Sashikaran, Dinesh Nayak, Sunder (Tirumalavalavan), C Dixon, Senthil, Radhakrishnan, Prabhakaran, Vinod Kumar (Felex), Cedric, Ramesh Babu and Satish Kumar.