Edmilson at Salt Lake Stadium. A Telegraph picture

Calcutta: Thanks to Marques Edmilson's brace, East Bengal kept their hopes of winning the ONGC National Football League with a 2-1 win over Mohammedan Sporting in a 12th round match at the Salt Lake Stadium on Saturday.

The three-time champions now have 22 points from 12 matches. Mahindra United have 23 points from 12, while Dempo are on 20 from 11 outings.

The scores were 1-1 inside the first nine minutes. Edmilson Marques put the red-and-golds ahead in the fourth and Mohammedan Sporting equalising through Jatin Bist in the ninth. The Brazilian restored his side’s lead eight minutes from full time, leaving no scope for the black-and-whites to make a comeback.

Edmilson had scored a brace in East Bengal’s 3-2 victory over HASC as well, on Wednesday.

It cannot be said that Mohammedan Sporting played badly and lost the match. Though they couldn’t perform like they did against Dempo, their planning and execution were very close to perfection on Saturday.

East Bengal drew the first blood after Edmilson slotted home from a Boniface Ambani square pass. But they could enjoy the lead for more than five minutes as Preston dodged past Suresh inside the penalty box and setting it up for Jatin to do the rest. Jatin made no mistake to restore parity.

Locked 1-1 at the breather, both teams looked to play safer than trying to clinch the winner. But as soon as game grew older, the inexperienced Mohammedan Sporting defence started making mistakes and one of those was capitalised by Man-of-the-Match Edmilson in the 82nd minute.

Suresh’s long through intended for Edmilson landed inside the penalty box. Edmilson — cordoned by Madhab Das and Eric Bolwe Mputu — unleashed a diagonal grounder that found the far post target.

There were occasions when Mohammedan Sporting players marched up to the box but failed to do the needful and that kept them on 10 points from 12 matches. East Bengal defence sans Covan Lawrence didn’t look out of shape barring few hiccups.

TEAMS

East Bengal: Naseem Akhtar, Syed Rahim Nabi, Cristiano Oliveira, M. Suresh, Saumik Dey (Shylo Malsawmtluanga 71), Dipankar Roy (Izumi Arata 46), Hardeep Saini, Chandan Das, Debabrata Roy, Boniface Ambani (Ashim Biswas 77), Edmilson Marques.

Mohammedan Sporting: Nasibul Haque, Mir Farooq Hyder, Eric Bolwe Mputu, Subhasish Roy Chowdhury, Madhab Das, Basudeb Mondal, Jatin Singh Bisth, Sunil Kumar, Preston Papai Corporal, Surojit Roy (Habibur Rehman Mondal 55), Harvinder Singh (Bijen Singh 49, Raman Vijayan 88).

Referee: P. Basker (Tamil Nadu).

Man-of-the-Match: Edmilson Marques.