Pirates steals the show at Titans’ den

Telugu Titans goes down to defending champion Patna Pirates 36-43 in the final match of the Hyderabad-leg of the Vivo Pro Kabaddi League Season 5.

Patna Pirates captain Pardeep Narwal tries to steer clear the Titans defence in a Pro Kabaddi League match in Hyderabad on Thursday.

 

It was another disappointing performance by crowd favourite Telugu Titans as defending champion, Patna Pirates, notched up an impressive 43-36 win in the final match of the Hyderabad-leg of the Vivo Pro Kabaddi League Season 5 at the Gachibowli Indoor Stadium here on Thursday night.

The winner led 23-16 at the break and with this win also recorded its fifth win in 11 meetings against Titans which suffered a shocking fifth defeat in-a-row this season in six matches.

Detailed match scores and updates

For Patna, this was the second win in as many matches – interestingly both coming against Titans

Once again, Titans defence left a lot to be desired and as the game progressed, the focus seemed to be too much on one individual – Rahul Chaudhari. But, again, he struggled and the sight of him being pinned down by the defence frequently was not very encouraging for his team too. Titans failed to get its act together for the fifth straight game as it looked disjointed and failed to provide the much needed cheer to the die-hard fans.

On the other hand, it was another stand-out performance by Patna with captain Pardeep Narwal leading from the front with nine raid points It was quite apparent that the raiders had always the liberty to fall back on defence manned so efficiently by Monu Goyat and Vishal Mane the few times Titans showed signs of fighting back especially when the scoreline led 15-16 thanks to a super tackle on Pardeep and Rahul scoring two crucial points.

But to the dismay of Titans camp, Patna scored an all out to take a 20-15 lead, there was looking back as the champions controlled the game better.

Though Titans showed enterprise in the dying minutes when it scored an all-out and Rahul earned two touch-points to reduce the lead to 33-41 at one stage, it was a bit too late to change the script as Patna emerged a comfortable winner in the end.

Patna coach Ram Meher felt that perhaps Titans could have to rethink its planning despite having some of the best players. “May be, playing continuously was also a reason for its poor run,” he added.

The result: Patna Pirates bt Telugu Titans 43-36.