Pro Kabaddi League 2017 Season 5: Rahul Chaudhari says he played the worst match of his career against Patna Pirates
"Don’t be shy, talk!”, Kartik Sansanwal, assistant manager of Patna Pirates attempted to get star man Pardeep Narwal to speak but yet again he simply gave boring one-word answers. The introverted, Narwal has firmly decided to only express himself on the mat.
The crowd couldn’t care less. On Saturday, he ran riot as he single-handedly helped the Pirates ease past Telugu Titans. With a single Dubki, he silenced the vociferous crowd at Hyderabad as Patna eventually won 35-29. This was slated as the match between Pardeep Narwal and Rahul Chaudhari. It was the former who won Round 1 of this intriguing battle.
After the match, Chaudhari accepted that he couldn’t rescue his side when they needed him the most. In his attempt to reach the 500-raid point mark, Telugu’s poster boy ended up damaging his side's chances.
“My performance today was zero, my team played really well. We lost the match because of me. Whenever my team needed me, I was tackled by Patna. I couldn’t help my team tonight,” he said.
Asked about Pardeep’s performance, Rahul chose to reel back the focus on his poor outing and suggested that his team were in no way to blame for the loss.
“My team put in a splendid performance in the first half, I was playing well too. In the second half, I was tackled every single time because of which we lost. My team did well to control Pardeep initially but in the end, his super raid damaged us,” quipped the man who now has 499 raid points to his name in PKL history.
Although Rahul did score an impressive seven points, he struggled to replicate his form in the second half of the match. Vishal Mane and co. were hounding him like a pack of wolves and didn’t let Chaudhari settle even for a second. But Rahul believes that Patna’s defence wasn’t the reason for his downfall.
“Patna’s defence wasn’t all that great, I don’t know what happened to me tonight, I just couldn’t get past the centre line. They were roughing me up but I don’t know how I got tackled. They were tracking every movement of mine. I have never been tackled so many times in a match. I don’t know if it’s bad luck or what,” Rahul exclaimed.
Commentators suggested that Rahul was a tad greedy in his personal pursuit to hit 500 points. He eventually fell short by one point. But Chaudhari shrugged of this accusation and said that he doesn’t play for individual records.
“You only feel happy by looking at the scoreboard when the team is winning. I couldn’t check my score today because my team couldn’t win. My focus was not on if I will be able to reach 500 points or not. I only play for my team to win but I wasn’t there for my team. The 500 points don’t matter to me,” he signed off.