Pro Kabaddi’s best raiding side Bengal Warriors going up against a struggling Patna Pirates, which languishes at the bottom of the league table, at the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium, on Thursday, as expected, turned out to be a points fest as the Bengal franchise cruised to a thumping 35-26 victory over Pirates.
Patna skipper Pardeep Narwal, who went in for the first raid, backed by a loud cheer from the crowd, scored a point straightaway. Bengal’s left corner Rinku Narwal, rushed in from the back for a block, but Pardeep used his pace to good effect, turned around and escaped the tackle.
In the subsequent raid, Pardeep fetched a quick bonus to add one more point to his tally of five points in the first half.
K. Prapanjan levelled the scores at 3-3 with a two-point raid. After bagging a bonus, Pirates’ Hadi Oshtrok tried a double thigh hold on the raider and floored him, but the brute force of Prapanjan allowed him to drag his body past the mid-line.
Bengal, then, drew back level again at 11-11 when the team successfully tackled Pardeep for the first time in the match. It was a ‘Do or Die’ raid and Jeeva Kumar, breaking free from the chain, charged at Pardeep’s knees, forcing him to take the aerial route, courtesy a ‘frog jump’. The raider, however, couldn’t keep his balance as the rest of Bengal team pounced at him.
Bengal went into the break with a one-point lead after a brilliant raid by Patna’s Puran Singh. Last man standing, Patna was staring at an ‘all-out’ when Singh went up against seven Bengal players. However, an eager Baldev Singh rushed in from the right corner attempting a thigh hold. The raider managed to scramble back to safety on his knees to revive one player.
From then on, it was only a matter of time before before Patna was bundled out. While Neeraj Kumar was busy targeting the right, Rinku sneaked in with a back hold to enable his team inflict the first ‘All Out’ of the game and take a five-point lead at 19-14.
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Bengal, however, executed a defensive masterclass as well. While Maninder Singh, Mohammad Nabibakhsh and Prapanjan kept the scoreboard ticking, Jeeva Kumar and Narwal executed one menacing tackle after another. Eventually, at 28-15, Nabibakhsh chipped in with a strong thigh hold on Ashish, which helped him floor the raider and effect a second ‘All Out’ on Pune.
Rinku Narwal, after a string of poor performances, finally justified his position by bringing up his first ‘Hi Five’ of the season. At 32-15, Mohammad Esmaeil Maghsoudlou was given the onus to bridge the deficit. However, a sharp Rinku, who pulled off a cheetah-like tackle, slowly crawled his way close to the raider and put his body on the line to floor him on his back.
Maninder’s night continued to get better when he reached yet another ‘Super 10’ with a running hand touch on Vikas Jaglan.
With a little under four minutes remaining on the clock, Bengal was cruising with a 17-point lead at 34-17. He registered his ‘Super 10’ on the night with three consecutive successful raids. First, a two-point raid, where he muscled past Baldev Singh and Viraj Vishnu Landge’s chain tackle followed by benching Nabibakhsh, whose thigh grapple wasn’t strong enough.
Led by Narwal, in the dying stages of the match, Patna inflicted the first Bengal ‘all-out’, to reduce the deficit to 10 points at 35-25. However, it was a little too late to cause further damage as Bengal cruised to a convincing nine-point win and jumped to the second spot on the table.
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