Pro Kabaddi League 2017 Season 5: Bengaluru Bulls coach issues challenge to UP Yoddha's captain Nitin Tomar
They tried till the very last minute but Bengaluru Bulls fell victims to an amazing all-round performance from U.P Yoddha. The new boys on the block beat the Bulls 32-27 in Saturday's crunch Pro Kabaddi League encounter.
Once again, Bengaluru’s usual suspect, Rohit Kumar produced a stunning performance scoring 11 raid points but his teammates couldn’t keep up with the pace of the game.
“It’s my job to keep trying, the team fell behind and it is my responsibility to try and improve the situation. We were trailing by a huge margin, so I tried to bring us closer. I thought our defence could work but it didn’t happen,” Rohit said.
The coach Randhir Singh also issued a challenge to UP Yoddha's captain, Nitin Tomar. The all-rounder had a great evening, scoring 9 points, leading from the front. But Randhir questioned if Tomar will be able to do in the upcoming games.
“In today’s time, Nitin tried getting points in certain areas, let’s see if he tries the same in the upcoming games,” he stated.
Bengaluru’s coach wasn’t impressed by UP’s performance. He reckons had they had Ravinder in the squad, things could have ended very differently. The defender was admitted to the hospital due to high fever.
“Our defence was not good due to Ravinder Pahal. He has fever, we will have to wait and see when he can come back. We still have two matches left against the same team. I challenge them,” the coach stated.
Randhir refused to pin the blame on captain Rohit Kumar. He believes the raider did all he can to help his side but he was utterly disappointed with how his defenders played throughout the course of the game.
“Rohit is not responsible for this. Three matches, he has scored 10 points, nobody has done this. The raiders did their job but the defenders didn’t do their job. The match was ours, our left cover made a mistake,” the coach explained.
Singh though shrugged off suggestions that his team is overly dependent on Ravinder in defence, explaining that the team had worked really hard to get the combination right with Ravinder in the team.
“Defending is about combination, corner to corner. We had practised this for 45 days. Our other corner knows exactly where Ravinder Pahal will be positioned. Our defenders totally failed or else we would have beat U.P Yoddhas by 8 to 10 points. We have amazing raiders,” he signed off.