PUNE: Season 7 auction’s biggest buy Siddharth Desai and his newest teammate Vishal Bhardwaj have bonded well through kabaddi’s sign language which they felt was better to understand instructions from their Iranian coach Gholamreza Mazandarani as Telugu Titans gets ready to host the opening leg of the Pro Kabaddi League in just over 10 days’ time.
Having recovered fully from injury after going under knife, the Pune-bred Desai, who hails from Hudalewadi in Chandgad near Kolhapur, is ready to rock this season saying he always focuses on the play and not which team he is representing.
With Desai in their ranks, Telugu Titans have emerged as dark horses of Season 7--no wonder the revamped management picked Desai at the price of `1.45 crore, one-third of their purse.
“I am doing everything to be match ready. Kabaddi is contact sport and for that fitness is a must to withstand intense action during play. How best you are able to wriggle out also matters and I have worked on that,” Desai told Sakal Times in an interview at Balewadi Sports Complex.
The star raider was in Pune for PKL’s campaign shoot where Desai, Bhardwaj and Rahul Chaudhari helped create promos, which are on air on Star Sports during the ongoing Cricket World Cup.
“We want to show that the sport of Kabaddi is not just strength but a mix of skills and strategy,” said Desai.
FROM UNA TO PKL
Bhardwaj too agreed saying he was indebted to the organisers who have raised the living standard of kabaddi players with total professional approach towards conducting the league.
“I started playing basketball in my village Una, but my coach spotted something in me and suggested to take up kabaddi and here I am after spending time in SAI Bilaspur,” said Bhardwaj.
The two have been with Titans’ team for bonding and training sessions and found the Iranian coach very affable even though they don’t share any common language.
“Kabaddi is our language and it doesn’t really hamper our strategy and he has picked up Hindi after having been with the league for so many seasons,” Desai and Bhardwaj said in unison.
Asked whether acting was easier than playing Kabaddi, Desai said that he was just learning the art.
“In shooting you get chance to do so many retakes, but during the match there is just one chance when you go for raids,” he said.
With the PKL Season 7 set to open on July 20 the crack combination that makes the Titans’ team will go into the 3-month-long gruelling season as dark horses having secured the prized catch.
ALL-STAR EXHIBITION MATCH
The Pro Kabaddi League organisers have planned an exhibition All-star match between Indian 7 and World 7 ahead of the start of the seventh edition. The match will be played on July 13, around a week before the commencement of the league at the Gachibowli Stadium in Hyderabad.
The players like Siddharth Desai, Rahul Chaudhari, Pawan Sehrawat and Ajay Thakur are the four players who are confirmed to be a part of the Indian side. Sehrawat was the star for the defending champions Bengaluru while Desai had made his debut in the previous season for U Mumba and emerged as a star of the sixth season.
Iranian players like Fazel Atrachali, Abozar Mighani and Mohammad Esmaeil Nabibakhsh along with South Korean star Jang Kun Lee will be a part of the World 7 in the exhibition game.
