Pro Kabaddi League 2017 Season 5: Five talking points from Day 18 of PKL 5
On the final night of action in Ahmedabad, the home team, the Gujarat Fortunegiants were looking to keep their perfect home record intact and make it six straight home wins. They were up against the Bengal Warriors on the night and they needed a strong comeback in the second half to prevent their first home loss. In the end, the match ended in a thrilling 26-26 tie.
Earlier, the first match of the night went right down to the wire, with Dabang Delhi engineering a come-from-behind win over the Tamil Thalaivas to sneak over the line by one point to win 30-29.
#1 The World Cup winning hero comes alive
Ajay Thakur was one of the stars for the Indian team in their successful World Cup campaign last year. Season 5 of Pro Kabaddi though has been a different cup of tea altogether for the experienced campaigner as despite being the captain of the new Tamil Thalaivas team and one of their leading raiders, he has had a quiet competition so far.
So much so that he has been benched midway through the last three games by his coach, with him being overlooked in favour of other new faces. After yesterday's game against the Haryana Steelers, Thalaivas coach K. Baskaran delivered a scathing review of Ajay's performances this season.
If coach Baskaran's intention was to light a fire under his captain though, it worked wonders as Ajay Thakur delivered a fantastic performance at the Transstadia Arena, the same place where he had played such a starring role during the World Cup last year. In a performance filled with composure, Ajay looked confident and just kept racking up the points on the night, taking advantage of some sloppy defending as well from the Dabangs. It was a superb comeback from Ajay on a night when his side needed him with Prapanjan, their lead raider so far, struggling. He had a Super 10, finishing with 13 raid points on the night.
Despite an error towards the end, we can forgive Ajay for that as his performance deserved a victory.