Pro Kabaddi League 2017 Season 5: "Mohit Chhillar was exceptional today," says victorious Steelers captain Surender Nada
With stakes high in the race for the third playoff spot in Zone A, the Haryana Steelers put on a superb display to register an important win against U Mumba, 41-30.
The Mumba defence has had a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde showing this season and today was not one of their best performances as the Steelers’ raiders plundered points.
“I want to congratulate our opponents as they played a very good game. Our defence played as badly as they could have and kept gifting points. From the start, I felt that today we might not end up winning,” said a disappointed Mumba coach E Bhaskaran.
“Their strategy worked very well. They decided to attack Surinder today and it paid off for them,” added Bhaskaran.
U Mumba are currently fourth in Zone A with 54 points, just three behind third-placed Puneri Paltan, but they have already played 19 games. Coach Bhaskaran though refused to write off his team's chances saying, “We will fight till the end. We will try to win our matches and see what happens with the other teams.”
The Haryana Steelers’ win was their first against U Mumba this season after having lost both encounters previously. It was a source of much joy for their captain Surender Nada who mentioned that the win was the result of plenty of planning.
“We had lost both matches before this. We made a strategy today for every Mumba raider. Kashi has been especially good against us previously and we controlled him. Our raiders too performed very well. Deepak did well and Vikas Kandola had a very good comeback match,” Nada said.
Nada picked up a High 5 on defence and played a part in nullifying the threat of his former captain Anup Kumar. Nada mentioned the role of his coaches’ plans in his success saying, “Our coaches told us to prevent Anup from picking up the Bonus Points. That worked very well. He also told us to not go for the ankle hold much, but go for the dive tackle instead.”
He also made special mention of his partner-in-crime, Mohit Chhillar’s performance. “Mohit Chhillar was just spectacular today. He gave such a good performance that it really worked so well for us to counter Mumba,” said Nada.
Vikas Kandola, coming back after 11 games due to injury, unfortunately, picked up another injury during the game. Nada though revealed that as of now they are yet to know how bad it was. “He had already had an injury there. And it was bad enough that we had to take him off."
The Steelers stay in second with the win, but narrow the gap to toppers Gujarat Fortunegiants to just three points.