Pro Kabaddi League 2017 Season 5: Five talking points from Day 36 of PKL 5
The Bengal Warriors were looking to round off their home leg with a win when they took on the Dabangs from Delhi. Dabang were coming off an impressive win against the Bengaluru Bulls while the Warriors were hurting from back-to-back losses to Haryana Steelers and U Mumba. After a cagey encounter, it was Delhi who finished strongly to force a tie as the Warriors let the game slip towards the end. It ended 31-31.
Earlier, the Puneri Paltan picked up a win over the Telugu Titans after having eviscerated them in the first half. The scoreline, in the end, showed a 42-37 win for the Paltan which was largely down to the Titans' comeback in the second half as an impressive all-round display from the Pune team was too much for Rahul Chaudhari's men on the night.
#1 Blink and you'll miss it
The Puneri Paltan started their game against the Telugu Titans like a house on fire. It took them just five minutes and 20 seconds to inflict the first All Out of the game and even more impressively, they did so without conceding a single point to their opponents. 9-0 just like that!
You would have thought that the Titans would brush that off and come back into the game, but they continued to look like a team in a slumber. The second All Out soon came with just 9 minutes and 45 seconds gone; 18-0 and still no points for the Titans.
They actually tackled a Pune raider during this sequence, but Farhad Milaghardan had actually crossed the mid-line and hence it was deemed a successful raid. Talk about things going wrong even when you do something right!
At this point, there was a genuine concern for the Titans and pretty soon and Pro Kabaddi was probably close to filing a missing-persons report on the entire team. They eventually picked up their first point in the 12th minute when Rahul Chaudhari earned a bonus even while getting tackled.
Had this been a boxing match, the referee would have stopped the fight; it was that bad. An absolute walloping is what it was.
That opening burst pretty much sealed the game then and there as the Paltan went on to have a 22-1 lead at one point with 14 minutes gone in the game. Despite a late rally, it was always going to be tough for the Titans to rally from that