Host Jaipur Pink Panthers played out a highly entertaining 28-28 tie against Gujarat Fortunegiants in the 100th match of Pro Kabaddi League season seven here on Saturday.
Both defences produced a masterclass in front of a packed audience at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium but the Pink Panthers will rue missing out on a win despite taking a healthy lead for the most of the first half.
Both teams started the match with aggressive defensive shapes. The raiders struggled to get a stranglehold of the match as the defenders kept putting in successful tackles.
The Pink Panthers, boosted by the return of Vishal, looked slightly better, and the marginal difference in quality was all the Pink Panthers needed to inflict an All-Out on the Gujarat Fortunegiants in the 13th minute.
The All-Out also opened a 6-point lead for the home side.The first half ended 15-10 with Jaipur on top.
Jaipur started the second half on the front foot with Vishal picking up a High 5 but the Gujarat defence picked up its game to halt the Jaipur dominance.
The visitor picked up its All-Out in the 7th minute of the second half to cut short Jaipur’s lead to two points. Gujarat moved to a three-point lead with less than four minutes left in the match through a successful raid by Sachin and a tackle by Parvesh Bhainswal.
Nitin Rawal pulled out another Super Tackle to level the points at 24-24 with under three minutes left to play.
Gujarat must have felt like they had secured a tie when they successfully tackled Deepak Hooda but Jaipur’s Nitin Rawal produced yet another Super Tackle to give the Pink Panthers the lead.
The Jaipur all-rounder secured his High 5 in the process but was tackled in the final play of the match by Gujarat to force a tie.
-UP Yoddha knocks Tamil Thalaivas out of PKL 2019-
UP Yoddha came back to winning ways with a convincing 42-22 victory over Tamil Thalaivas in the second match of the day.
UP suffered an early 'All-out' and then staged a comeback in the second half to complete the pounding. New life was injected into UP when Shrikant Jadhav sent four men to the bench with a 'Super-raid' on the brink of half-time to reduce Thalaivas' to one man.
The second half was a completely different story as UP came back all guns blazing. UP began the second half with its first 'All-out. With tackles and raid points coming in tandem, UP raced to a 23-15 lead. In the next 15 minutes, UP bundled out the Chennai-based side two more times, Sumit brought up his 'High-5' as UP jumped to the fourth place in the point table.
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