Pro Kabaddi League 2017 Season 5: Five reasons why Bengaluru Bulls can win the title
The Pro Kabaddi caravan will commence later on this month on the 28th of July and go on for a good three months with the final encounter scheduled to take place on the 28th of October.
The addition of four new teams - UP Yoddhas, Tamil Thalaivas, Haryana Steelers and Fortune Giants Gujarat - means the season will be longer than the previous editions.
Thus, the fans of India's homegrown sport will witness more than 130 matches being played across 10 states with 12 teams taking the battle to each other.
One team in the fray are Bengaluru Bulls owned by the Kosmik Global Media group, who have had a fairly mixed history in terms of their results since the league's inception.
In the first edition, the Bulls led by Manjeet Chhillar made the cut to the semi-finals but failed to progress from there on and secured a fourth place finish.
Taking heart from their performance, they had their best finish in the second season where they made it to the finals only to succumb to U Mumba 30-36 in the penultimate encounter.
However, the last two editions have seen a downslide in the team's form, in the sense that they finished 7th and 6th in Season 3 and 4 respectively.
Nonetheless, now post the player auctions in the fifth edition, the revamped squad looks like one that is capable of challenging the might of the other teams. We look at five reasons why the Bengaluru Bulls can end up as the champions this time around!
#1 Rohit Kumar leading the charge
He may have entered the Pro Kabaddi scene late, but ever since he has arrived, he has made sure that his performance on the mat does the talking for him. In his debut season in the third edition, Rohit played for the Patna Pirates and finished as the Most Valuable Player besides winning the title with the team. In the next season, he switched to the Bulls, and despite the team finishing sixth on the points tally, Rohit emerged as the team’s top scorer in 12 of the 14 matches.
Thus, for the fifth edition, he was the ideal cut-out for the captain's role and will marshal his troops around effectively, leading by example. This was evident when he was quoted as saying to PTI that, "We come with a fresh mind set and a young self- motivated team with a well-devised strategy in place for this season." "We are training rigorously, placing a lot of importance on a healthy diet that helps optimise our performance and we look forward to performing well and seeing a remarkable result this season."