Puneri Paltan and Bengaluru Bulls continued their excellent form in the Pro Kabaddi League with comfortable wins over Haryana Steelers and the Gujarat Giants respectively at the Gachibowli Indoor Stadium in Hyderabad on Friday.
Aslam Inamdar led the Paltan to a 41-28 win over the Steelers while Bharat scored 18 points to help the Bulls beat the Giants 45-38. In the other match of the day, Bengal Warriors rode on captain Maninder Singh’s performance to beat the Telugu Titans 36-28.
Inamdar emerged as the star for the Pune side with 10 points on the night as Paltan led 20-10 at the end of the first half.
The Steelers tried to make a comeback in the second half, but the Paltan defense continued to stand tall. Fazel Atrachali used his experience to tackle Manjeet as the Pune side inflicted an ALL OUT to attain a stronghold of the match at 31-17.
Vinay picked up a SUPER RAID late in the game, but the Steelers were too far behind Puneri’s score. The side from Pune kept raging on and eventually closed out a comprehensive victory.
Bharat, on his first raid of the evening — and in fact the evening’s fourth raid — got a Super Raid taking out the Giants’ Rinku Narwal, Rakesh and Manuj to leave them reeling and staring at an early all out. The ALL OUT duly came soon after, as the Bulls surged into a 9-3 lead.
The Bulls went on to get their second ALL OUT of the game to run into a 20-13 lead. Bharat had by then registered a super 10 already. Despite a late Giants fightback, the teams went into halftime with the Bulls leading 26-22.
The pace of the game dropped in the second period, but the quality remained high. While Bharat’s constant success when raiding ensured the Bulls never lost the lead, they were never truly out of sight either.
Maninder scored 12 points, while Shrikant Jadhav chipped in with 7 points in the match as the Warriors stayed in the hunt for a playoff spot.
The Warriors inflicted an ALL OUT in the opening minutes of the second half and took a massive lead at 20-14. Abhishek Singh and Siddharth Desai picked up raid points for the Titans, but Maninder Singh’s heroics helped the Warriors come away with victory.