Maninder Singh led the Bengal Warriors to a 35-29 win over Bengaluru Bulls in Jaipur on Monday, in what was the 1000th match of the Pro Kabaddi League.
The Bengal captain, who had played in both the first and the 500th PKL match (for Jaipur Pink Panthers and Warriors respectively), put in a good shift with nine raid points with Shubham Shinde chipping in with seven tackle points. For Bengaluru, Bharat Hooda starred once again, picking up a super 10 along with Neeraj Narwal picking up four points.
In the second match of the day, home team Jaipur Pink Panthers held their nerve to seal a close 31-28 victory over U Mumba and moved to the top of the points table. Arjun Deshwal starred for the defending champions once again with a Super 10 while U Mumba’s Guman Singh scored a solid 11 raid points.
Interestingly, the Pink Panthers and U Mumba had competed in the first ever PKL match.
Bengaluru exerted their dominance at the start with Hooda rattling the Bengal defence to give his team a 5-2 lead in the fifth minute. Maninder then pulled off a double-point raid to take out both Hooda and Surjeet Singh, but Bengaluru continued to maintain a lead in the 12th minute.
Both star raiders on either team were locked in a 1v1 battle with the star defender – Maninder vs Surjeet and Hooda vs Shinde.
The difference was that Maninder had the backing of Nitin Kumar who scored four points and was handy in relieving the pressure off his captain. Smart tackling from Shinde and Jaskirat Singh, coupled with Kumar’s efforts brought the first all-out for Bengaluru in the 16th minute and gave Bengal a 15-11 lead. They would continue to hold the lead going into half-time, with both Shinde and Maninder leading their respective stations well.
Surjeet managed to get the better of Maninder in the opening minutes of the second half while Hooda too continued his successful raids. Bengaluru then ended up inflicting an all-out on Bengal with 12 minutes to go and inched ahead 21-20. Shinde then continued to put in a brilliant shift in defence which gave Bengal some momentum to effect a second all-out on Bengaluru and take a solid lead of 32-27 with three minutes to go.
Maninder then closed out the game in a flashy manner with another double-point raid to secure their third successive win.
Jaipur Pink Panthers beat U Mumba
Matches between the defending champions and U Mumba have always been close and that is displayed in their head-to-head record – 10 wins each and two ties. This was the nature of the opening few minutes as they kept abreast of each other in the scoreline.
Deshwal was Jaipur’s star raider once again while Amirmohammad Zafardanesh helped U Mumba to keep pace with the home team. Unfortunately, an injury cut short his time in the game which spelt trouble for the Mumbai side who went into half-time with a slim one-point lead.
V Ajith Kumar set things alight with his super raid that took out U Mumba captain Surinder Singh, Rinku and Mukilan Shanmugam to open up the gap. But U Mumba hit back straight away and didn’t allow Jaipur to rest on the lead.
Because both teams were matching each other for every point, neither team had been able to secure an all-out. A super tackle on Guman Singh with six minutes to go proved to be the turning point for Jaipur, giving them the lead by three points. Despite a two-point raid from Heidarali as a last-ditch attempt, U Mumba were unable to recover the deficit and handed Jaipur their third win at home.
PKL legends honoured
Before the start of the 1000th match, the Pro Kabaddi League presented five former players from the first six seasons with gold coins to honour their contributions and place in PKL history.
Former U Mumba captain and Season 2 champion Anup Kumar, star raider and Padma Shri Ajay Thakur, legendary defenders Manjeet Chhillar and Dharmaraj Cheralathan and Season 3’s best raider and current PKL commentator Rishank Devadiga were all felicitated by the league.