A brilliant display by the India U-23 shot stopper Arindam Bhattacharya helped India to clinch SAFF Cup 2009 defeating Maldives 3-1 on penalties in the final played at the Bangabandhu stadium today. India took a sweet revenge of their last year defeat when they went down to Maldives in the 2008 SAFF Cup final by a solitary goal. This is the fifth SAAF Cup title for India since the inception of the tournament. The grand finale certainly proved to be a cracker as both the teams failed to break the deadlock in the regulation time. It was certainly a game of two halves as both the teams had equal chances to score a goal but neither team capitalized the chances that came their way. Maldives did started as hot favourite to win the SAFF Cup final after their emphatic 5-1 win over Sri Lanka in the semi-finals but were brought down to earth when Indian U-23 put up a convincing performance to deny Maldives to register their second SAFF Cup title. India U-23 custodian Arindam Bhattacharya continued his splendid form and once again emerged as the star performer for his side as he pulled off two great saves in the penalty shoot-out to help India to win 8th edition of SAFF Cup championship (the first two edition was named as SAARC Championship ) and was named the '' Player of the Tournament''. Sukvinder Singh’s boys showed a great temperament throughout the match and put up a brave fight against the Maldives to record a great achievement under their belt. For India, Khangembam Jeevan Singh, Denzil Franco and Subodh Kumar converted from the spot, while Nirmal Chetri spot-kick was wide of the post .Ibrahim Fazeel was the lone scorer for Maldives with Mukhtar Naseer, Ahmed Thoriq and Ali Ashfaaq missing from the spot.