Bengaluru Bulls edged past Telugu Titans by 40-39 in a nail-biting final match of the Pro Kabaddi League’s Bengaluru leg at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium. The credit of Bull’s victory goes to star raider Pawan Sehrawat.
The raider scored a massive 18 raid points for the Bulls but the defending champions had to struggle for their victory largely due to Siddharth Desai’s raiding prowess at the other end for the Titans.
Desai finished with 19 raid points (joint best in Pro Kabaddi history) but a few errors, especially from league’s best defender Vishal Bhardwaj, proved too costly for the Titans against their South Indian rivals.
With the scores level at 38-38, Pawan produced an acrobatic two-point raid in the penultimate raid of the match while Siddharth Desai was not allowed to venture forward in the last move as the Bulls sacrificed a player to clinch the match.
Before the match at the same venue, UP Yoddha had outplayed Patna Pirates 41-29.
Shrikanth Jadhav (Super 10 with 10 points), Surender Gill (7 points) and Nitesh Kumar (5 tackle points) were all in form for the UP side who produced an all-round performance to secure an important victory that has them knocking at the doors of a playoff berth sitting in seventh place.
Three-time champions Patna Pirates struggled to get a stranglehold of the match despite another Super 10 ( 14 raid points) from their raider Pardeep Narwal. The lack of alternatives to Pardeep Narwal in the raiding department has been a major problem for Patna Pirates in this season and it was all too evident once again in the early minutes of their match against UP Yoddha.
Pardeep Narwal clinched a Super 10 in the final minutes but Patna couldn’t manage a way back into the game. It got worse for the Pirates with less than three minutes remaining in the game when they suffered another All-Out.
(With inputs from IANS)