Pro Kabaddi League 2017 Season 5: Fazel Atrachali braves injury to lead Gujarat to win over Puneri Paltan
The Gujarat Fortunegiants maintained their extraordinary start to the Pro Kabaddi Season 5 campaign with a comfortable win over Zone A rivals Puneri Paltan. They took an early lead and kept it throughout the game, not giving the Pune side any chances to score. After a strong performance in their last match against Patna, the Paltan's performance looked pretty weak in front of the Gujarat team as they lost by a hefty 35-21 margin.
Captain Deepak Hooda looked very disappointed after the game. He said, "Both the teams are extremely good. There was no problem in our team or our raiding. A few mistakes by the defense at the start cost us the match." He also added, "Whichever team makes fewer mistakes wins the game and in that aspect, Gujarat outperformed us tonight."
The Pune coach commented, "We had changed plans and prepared different strategies for Gujarat, which unfortunately didn’t work for us. We had thought that we will try and get as many bonus points as possible. However, that plan failed and we had to rely only on single touch points. Also, getting all out twice was not a good sign for the team.”
The Gujarat Fortunegiants celebrate their seventh match unbeaten and looked full of confidence. Their coach Manpreet Singh didn't hesitate to comment, “We are participating for the first time in the ProKabaddi League and have consistently been performing well.”
He praised the Iranian players in the team and said, “We have two highly experienced foreign players in the team, who have played in the Asian Games in the past. This is a huge advantage for us." He added, "The rest of the players are all young. We have no big names in the team and still, we are the best in the league so far.”
The coach stated, “We had done our homework well. After Pune’s win against Patna, the team had made new strategies accordingly.” Fazel, who seemed in pain during the match, suffered an injury in the last match but still put up a great show today. He said, “Kabaddi is a game of body contact and one is bound to get injured sometime during the game. It is just an injury which will heal, but the game should not suffer.”
Young raider Sachin, who has been performing extremely well for the team, said, “It was one of the toughest matches so far but we won it anyway with some great efforts and good planning.”