After Patna Pirates, U.P. Yoddha has become the second team to advance to the playoffs stage in the ongoing eighth edition of the Pro Kabaddi League. They accomplished this feat by inflicting a 35-28 win over U Mumba on Thursday.
What made this victory so impressive was the fact that it came despite an ordinary performance by their leading raider Pardeep Narwal. Surender Singh stepped up to the challenge and scored eight points in the match.
In fact, the match saw both the lead raiders for their respective team fail to rise to the occasion. Abhishek Singh needed to come good for the Mumbai-based team but could only manage four points. Pardeep ended with six points, three of which he got in his first raid of the match.
Another key member of U Mumba was their captain Fazel Atrachali. He managed to score his first successful tackle in the sixth minute of the match. But the Iranian added just one more point to his kitty in the rest of the contest.
The match started with Pardeep leading the way for his team as he scored five raid points in the first 10 minutes. His counterpart Abhishek was struggling to get points on his raids. It was V Ajith Kumar who kept his team in the running.
Pardeep first got tackled in the 11th minute of the match. However, that didn’t prove to be decisive as a courtesy of Surender’s raiding and solid defending, the Yoddha reduced U Mumba to just two men in the 16th minute.
However, a super tackle led by Rinku on Pardeep delayed the inevitable as U Mumba eventually succumbed to an all-out in the 19th minute with UP leading 18-10 as at half-time.
After the break, Fazel’s side made a great comeback. They kept cutting down the lead and eliminating Yoddha players. Pardeep continued to fail. Eventually, it was the UP-based side that conceded an all-out in the seventh minute of the second half to level the scores 20-20.
Surender Gill jumps over the challenge posed by U Mumba’s Rinku
It was a close contest from there on as Surender registered a key three-point super-raid in the 30th minute to give his team the lead but Mumbai managed to get level again at 25-25 with around seven minutes remaining.
Between the 16th and the 19th minute, the match took a decisive turn when both Abhishek and Ajith got tackled in their respective raids. A three-point lead opened up for Nitesh Kumar’s side with the score reading 30-27.
Mumbai had to pull out all stops but they were left with just two players on the mat – Fazel and substitute Prathap S brought in to go on the next raid. Surprisingly, he managed a touchpoint with a quick raid to bring the score to 30-28.
However, in his next raid, where Prathap needed to score again, he was tackled and that effectively ended the resistance by Fazel’s team. The last raid was by Surender with no threat to his team’s lead and a half-hearted attempt at a super tackle by the two remaining players of Mumbai was foiled and another all-out inflicted right at the end.
With this win, UP has joined league leaders Patna in the playoffs. The collective effort of their defense is testified to by the fact that all their starting defenders scored points – three each for Sumit, Ashu Singh, and Shubham Kumar, and two for captain Nitesh.