Pro Kabaddi League 2017 Season 5: Five talking points from Day 35 of PKL 5
North clashed with south while east clashed with west in the Inter zone challenge week on Thursday as Dabang Delhi took on the Bengaluru Bulls and the Bengal Warriors played U Mumba at the Netaji Subhash Indoor Stadium.
Rohit Kumar's team gave a good account of themselves in the first half but were done in by Dabang captain Meraj Sheykh who brought the house down with some awe inspiring raids on the night to earn himself a Super 10.
In the other game of the day, U Mumba gave another commanding performance and gave the home team their second consecutive defeat and also some concerns going into their next fixture.
Here are the five talking points of the day.
#1 Abolfazl comes to party
Most teams in Season 5 have struggled with the absence of a firing second go to raider. Delhi themselves haven’t got going in the tournament because of a lack of a strong raider in the team. Meraj Sheykh has done his job in a number of games for the team but at the end of the day, he is an all rounder whose raiding skills are exceptionally good but not a fully fledged raider.
With the tournament inching closer to its business end now, Dabang Delhi needed a raider to step up if they wanted to keep themselves in the hunt. And on Wednesday, Abolfazl Maghsodlou did it for Delhi.
The tall Iranian was brilliant in the first half and like he has done on several occasions, made superb use of his height to win some mental battles against the Bulls. He suffered an injury in the second half that took some sting out of him and allowed Meraj to take over.
He, however, still ended with impressive figures of eight points from 12 raid attempts. The raider has been pretty good for the team this season and has just made nine unsuccessful raid attempts in front of 32 successful raids. With Meraj in form and Maghsodlou coming into his own too, Dabang Delhi can grow into contenders if they can string together a few more wins in the coming fixtures.