East Bengal-Mohun Bagan shared the honours on the first derby of the Kolkata Super League, though the red-golds maintained a distinct edge which they could not translate into goals.

Mohun Bagan went into the lead against the run of the play when of a sudden counter attack Noel Wilson overlapped down the left flank and send a deft minus that found Ashim Biswas at the top of the box.

The striker played a couple of wall passes with his partner up front Sunil Chetri that left the East Bengal defense in disarray. Sunil, who looks in good touch this season, seeing a small opening shot into the near post to see the ball enter the East Bengal goal past a diving Sangram Mukherjee. The game was 25 minutes old.

East Bengal had to wait till the 26th minute of the second half to restore parity. Rahim Nabi was brought down at the top of the box by Rishi Kapoor and Douglas D’Silva, donning the East Bengal colours for the first time this season replacing Chandan Das, got into the act.

Douglas scored from the resultant freekick that took a slight deflection before going in. The Brazilian is indeed making the area in front of the rival box ‘Douglas Zone’ with his lethal dead ball moves.

The goals apart Baichung Bhutia missed a couple of open chances within seven minutes of the game and Climax Lawrence saw his deft placement to the far post Of a Malswama chip go out before grazing the upright. While Ashim Biswas gave a tense moment to the East Bengal goal 60 minutes into the match, of the counter attack Shasti Duley saw his shot go out hitting the crossbar.

After the match Coach Subhas Bhowmik said he was immensely happy with his team’s performance and it was bad luck that they could not convert their chances into goals.

“We should have won. They also played a good match, but we played better. I am also happy with the way my outstation players played,” Bhowmik said.