CHENNAI: A collective defence in 39th minute helped Puneri Paltan to held U Mumba 32-32 in the second match of the Pro Kabaddi League Season 6 at Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium in Chennai on Sunday.
Going into the last minute Mumbai was trailing 32-31. Siddharth Desai who was best raider for U Mumba scoring 14 points failed to steal a point in his last raid as Pune managed to earn three points.
U Mumba who did not put foot wrong in the match was out done by Monu who collected one point in his second last raid to make score line 32-31.
For Pune, Nitin Tomar was the star of the match scoring 15 points. Monu provided him a able support scoring 5 points. Captain Girish Ernak who had dull first half delivered good show in the last 20 minutes to earn 3 raid points for his team.
Fazel Atrachali scored four points in defence for U Mumba while in raiding Pune born Siddharth collected 14 points.
Earlier both the team started neck to neck with taking points in tandem. For U Mumba it was young raider Siddharth who was taking points with ease while for Paltan it was Nitin who collected touch points.
Soon U Mumba picked up the momentum with their other raiders Rohit Baliyan and Abhishek Singh chipping in with points. Meanwhile for orange army seasoned campaigner Rajesh Mondal and defender Sandeep Narwal failed to collect points.
In the 16th minute, Abhishek’s raid helped Mumbai to force an ‘All out’ over Pune with score line reading 17-13 in Mumbai’s favour.
Ahead with four points, Mumbai kept attacking and scored the points. Nitin again came to rescue and collected couple of points as teams went into the half time with Mumbai leading 20-18.
In the first match, home team Tamil Thalaivas came out with a blazing performance to out play defending champions Patna Pirates 42-26.
Ajay Thakur led from the front scoring 14 points while he got good support from Surjeet Singh who scored seven points. In defence, Amit Hooda collected four points while experienced duo Manjeet Chhillar and Jasvir Singh scored three points each.
For Patna Pirates leaving Pardeep Narwal who scored 11 points, none of the players managed to steal the points in raiding as well as defence department.
Tamil Thalaivas which brought in players like Manjeet, Jasvir into their squad started with a bang and put defending champions Patna Pirates straight on to back foot.
A defence which looked toothless for Thalaivas in Season 5 delivered impressive performance and controlled the game till the end.
After a couple of empty raids from both the ends, Ajay scored first point of the Season 6 with his raid. From their onwards, Thalaivas went all attacking and forced first ‘All Out’ in eighth minute with score reading 10-2.
RESULT:
Puneri Paltan 32 (Nitin Tomar 15, Monu 5, Girish Ernak 5, Ravi Kumar 2, Sandeep 2, Sandeep Narwal 2) drew with U Mumba 32 (Siddharth Desai 14, Fazel Atrachali 5, Dharmaraj Cheralathan 4, Rohit Baliyan 3).
Best Raider: Nitin Tomar (Puneri Paltan)
Best defender: Fazel Atrachali (UMumba).
