PKL: Thakur’s late raid steals it for Tamil Thalaivas

A final raid in the dying seconds of the game saw Ajay Thakur prove his class and overturn a predictable loss into a morale-boosting win for Tamil Thalaivas, edging past Bengal Warriors 33-32 in the Pro Kabaddi League at the Thyagaraj sports complex here on Sunday.

Despite the win Thalaivas stays put at the bottom of the table although it has played six games fewer than Bengal Warriors.

A final raid in the dying seconds of the game saw Ajay Thakur prove his class and overturn a predictable loss into a morale-boosting win for Tamil Thalaivas, edging past Bengal Warriors 33-32 in the Pro Kabaddi League at the Thyagaraj sports complex here on Sunday.

The result ended Bengal's four-match unbeaten streak and halted its march towards the top of the table in Zone B. Thalaivas, however, stayed put at the bottom of the table although it has played six games fewer than Bengal and, this win, after can still hope to fight its way back into contention for the next stage.

Match Centre

Trailing by three points with two minutes to go, Thakur took it upon himself to get the final few points, scoring four points in three successive raids to snatch away full points. The Bengal raiding unit of Maninder Singh, Deepak Narwal and Jang Kun Lee tried its best, Maninder scoring a massive 13 points, but it was not enough to stop a fighting Thalaivas from snatching its third win of the season even as the defence of Surjeet Singh and Ran Singh appeared off colour. In fact, every time Maninder went off the mat, Bengal struggled to score points while the opposition took full advantage of the situation.

For a large part, it was the defence that kept Thalaivas in the game. Arun and Darshan avoided an all-out repeatedly – the team managed three super tackles – and the raiding unit combined to do the rest, ensuring a Bengal all-out in the 12th minute. But the gap was never big with the teams going into half time, Thalaivas leading 18-15.

But while the rest of the raiders failed to break the deadlock – the duo managed several super tackles to keep Thalaivas ahead for a large part of the game – Maninder managed to find gaps and kept chipping away points. Bengal first went ahead in the 31st minute after Thalaivas was finally all-out and Maninder pulled ahead to make it 32-29 with two minutes to go. But that was before Thakur came into the act to upset Bengal's calculations.

The result: Tamil Thalaivas 33 (Ajay Thakur 8, C. Arun 8, M. Thivakaran 5) bt Bengal Warriors 32 (Maninder Singh 13, Surjeet Singh 5, Deepak Narwal 4, Jang Kun Lee 4).