Pro Kabaddi League 2017 Season 5: Five talking points from Day 26 of PKL 5
Patna Pirates - the defending champions were in action again on Saturday when they played against the Tamil Thalaivas in their seventh game of the season and, after starting off slowly, made easy work of the debutantes whose defence had the misfortune of coming in the way of rampaging pair of Pardeep Narwal and Monu Goyat.
They both plundered points in the second half and were given ample support by the Jaideep-led defence to sink Thalaivas completely.
More than the first match, however, it was the second match of the night that had everybody excited as U Mumba and Puneri Paltan fought in the Maharashtrian derby. This was the first time both the teams were meeting after Pune had their first win of the derby in their last encounter. U Mumba made all the right moves and had the match in control for most part of the game before Pune showed why they are such a feared and respected opponent.
They turned the tables right at the last to eke out a narrow victory from a match that, at once, had seemed out of their grasp.
These were the five talking points from the 26th day of Pro Kabaddi League.
#1 Dubki King's comeback
The evening began in the most ominous of ways for Pardeep Narwal as he was brought down on his first raid by old nemesis Amit Hooda. In the next two of three raids, Darshan came off the chain and took him out of the equation twice with a block.
For once, it seemed a defensive unit had cracked the Narwal code as the raider's misery continued for the most part of the first half as he spent much of it on the sidelines.
But just before the half time whistle, Narwal got an easy point to inflict the All Out and then came back again to fool the full strength defence with a special Dubki.
From there on, neither Narwal nor his team looked behind and put a sloppy first half comfortably behind to score a dominating win. Narwal finished only with six points, which is almost nothing in front of a name that has produced 19 points too. However, after that kind of beginning to the game, Narwal has reasons to be proud of those 6 points even.