Chennai: Patna Pirates finally ended its losing streak at home with a win over Bengal Warriors in Pro Kabaddi League Season 6.
It came up trumps with a scoreline of 29-27. It was a low-scoring match in which both teams laid a lot of emphasis on the defence. Jaideep was the star of the show as he collected five tackle points. Despite being primarily a defender, Bengal’s Ran Singh showed his prowess as a raider, getting seven points from his 10 raids.
Warriors’ lead raider Maninder Singh did not feature in the close contest. Deepak Narwal did some damage in the end to take Patna Pirates past the finish line.
Pardeep Narwal sat out as he has not fully recovered from his wrist injury, which has been troubling him in the past few games. The absence of Pardeep looked prominent for Patna as it trailed by four points as early as the 3rd minute. It looked like another dismal start to the game by Patna, but it was overturned by Tushar Patil, who came in as a substitute in the 5th minute for a ‘Do-Or-Die’ raid. The scores were level by the 8th minute.
Bengal lost Mahesh Goud and Jang Kun Lee to Patna’s defence and hence Ran had to go in for a lot of raids during the encounter. He took two bonus points from under the nose of the Patna defence before getting out to a strong thigh hold by Vijay in the 12th minute. With that, Patna inflicted the first all-out of the game, taking a slender lead.
Both teams then worked on getting points from the ‘Do-Or-Die’ raids. The half ended with Patna leading Bengal 15-12.
Bengal reduced the gap to one point by the 25th minute, with Jang Kun Lee doing a back kick to make it 15-16.
Then, Patna increased the gap to four points by the 27th minute as Manjeet got Mahesh with an ankle hold while Jaideep dashed on the raider from behind to make it 19-15. The 32nd minute saw Deepak saved by the line officials, who saw Shrikant Tewthia step out of the mat. He was not only a main defender for his side, but was someone who caused Deepak problems.
Ran continued his good work in the raiding department. He would have got six players out if his dangling foot had crossed the mid-line after being stopped by Jaideep. Baldev Singh caught a leap frog attempt by Tushar Patil in the 37th minute as Bengal crept back towards equalising the scoreline.