Teammates lift captain Mehtab Hussain after Mohun Bagan beat Tollygunge Agragami at the Salt Lake Stadium on Sunday. The win helped Mohun Bagan lift the Premier Division title with two more matches to go. Pictures by Gautam Bose

Calcutta: Mohun Bagan annexed the inaugural CFL Premier Division title when they pipped Tollygunge Agragami by a Sanjay Parte strike at the Salt Lake Stadium on Sunday. Bagan thus won the local league after a gap of four years. Mohun Bagan logged 36 points from 12 matches, while arch-rivals East Bengal are way behind on 25 after 11 games. Even if Bagan lose the two remaining matches they are assured of the title.

It was a poor display by the green-and-maroon brigade, but still they managed to take home the required three points. Mohun Bagan, in all, have won the Calcutta League 26 times of which four times it was achieved under Amal Dutta ? 1979, 1986, 1997 and 2005. Now it is to be seen whether Mohun Bagan can maintain their unbeaten run in the league.

Dutta’s men seemed a determined lot from the outset and launched attacks one after the other but the all important goal came in the 24th minute, for which they should consider themselves lucky. Parte’s long-ranger following a deflection dipped inside the goal. Parte ultimately was adjudged the Man of the Match.

With one-goal cushion, Dutta’s men seemed complacent and didn’t try hard to enhance the margin except in the 32nd minute when a low Tomba Singh cross was narrowly missed by Sushil Kumar.

It was no different after the breather as Mohun Bagan’s new hero Togolese Gley Yao Rodrigue looked far from fit, except few flashes of brilliance. Rodrigue’s half-turn right footer took Tolly goalie Dutta by surprise and he had to dive to his left to thwart it. Two minutes later, the Togolese got another chance after he latched on to a Noel Wilson through, but failed to do score.

TEAMS

Mohun Bagan: Subrata Pal, Dulal Biswas, Eduardo Coelho, Feroze, Sanjay Parte, Noel Wilson, Tomba Singh, Mehtab Hussain, Dharamjit Singh, Sushil Kumar (Jerry Zirsangha 45, Harvinder Singh 89), Gley Yao Rodrigue.

Tollygunge Agragami: Proloy Dutta, Mahesh Sarkar, Nayan Dey, Sheikh Azim, Dibakar, Tridib Chowdhury, Manoj Das, Bhola Prasad (Sudip Banik 46), Surajit Chakraborty (Trijit Das 72), Ayan Chowdhury, Prasanta Chakraborty.

Referee: Subrata Sarkar.