Pro Kabaddi League 2017 Season 5: 5 talking points from Day 1 of PKL 5

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The first day of Pro Kabaddi League began with two mouth watering derbies dished out to the massive crowds who came to the Gachibowli Stadium in Hyderabad. The tournament opener saw two teams from South India, Ajay Thakur's Tamil Thalaivas and Rahul Chaudhari's Telugu Titans, go up against each other where the latter showed why he and his team are the favourites in the fifth season of the Pro Kabaddi League.

The second game of the double header saw two Maharashtra teams locking horns and U Mumba unleashing the dream raiding pair of Kashiling Adake and Anup Kumar on Puneri Paltan, who had previously defeated the Season 2 winners only once. However, it all came a cropper for U Mumba as Pune's defence proved too good on the day to hand them their second victory over U Mumba in the Pro Kabaddi League history.

#1 Ajay Thakur 'slaps' Rahul Chaudhari

The match was billed as a battle between the star of India’s Kabaddi World Cup, Ajay Thakur and the undisputable star of Pro Kabaddi League, Rahul Chaudhari. And that’s how it began with both taking every raid as if to prove a point. After Rahul Chaudhari took a successful raid with a touch at the left corner in the first half, Thakur came to take a raid.

As the chain prowled around him, he bluffed them with his nifty footwork and before anyone could realize, Thakur flung his hand at a cornered Chaudhari to take him out and ran back quickly to make it count. The replays revealed that it was almost a slap that made Chaudhari wince in pain for a while before leaving the mat. However, in hindsight, the slap probably wasn’t that good an idea as a galvanized Chaudhari made merry to finish with10 points while Ajay Thakur had little to cheer about after that.

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