Pro Kabaddi League 2018: Darshan Kadian and Surender Singh, the breakout stars for U Mumba in their home leg
U Mumba won 4 of its 6 matches at home, the best performance by any team in its home leg in the Pro Kabaddi Season 6 so far. For a team to win this quantum of the matches after featuring in 6 matches within a week is quite difficult as fatigue sets in the starting 7 and the lack of a quality bench strength comes into play.
Darshan Kadian and Surender Singh debuted in the Pro Kabaddi League 2017 with U Mumba, where they were given ample opportunities under the captaincy of Anup Kumar. While both of them did show the occasional signs of brilliance, not one of them was consistent to make a positive impact on the team's fortunes. But this time around both of them peaked at the right time during the hectic home leg schedule to clinch crucial wins for their team.
Darshan featured in 5 of the 6 home matches, missing the one against the Haryana Steelers, and scored 33 raid points at an average of 6.6 raid points per match. His performance took the pressure off Siddharth Desai who had been single-handedly contributing to U Mumba's raiding points before.
Darshan was the team's top raider in the last two matches of the home leg against the Bengaluru Bulls (9 points) and the Tamil Thalaivas (6 points) and staked his claim to be the support to Siddharth Desai as the 2nd choice raider of the team.
While Surender Singh has played 13 matches in this season, he could manage just 16 tackle points from the first 7 matches without a single High-5.
As the home leg began, Surender was again a little slow to start as he scored 2, 1 and 2 tackle points in matches against Jaipur Pink Panthers, Gujarat Fortunegiants and Haryana Steelers respectively. But, the 4th match of the home leg, Match 61 against the UP Yoddha was when Surender showed his true brilliance, as he repeatedly thwarted the efforts of the opposition's raiders, to gather his first High-5 of the season with 7 tackle points and win the title of the TATA Ace Defender of the Match. He followed it up with another High-5 against the Bengaluru Bulls and scored a 3-point performance against the Tamil Thalaivas to bring a happy end to U Mumba's home leg. These performances have made sure that U Mumba stay on top of the Pro Kabaddi Points Table in Zone A.
The contributions of these youngsters along with the rest of the team's performance have proved the depth in their squad and make them the favourite to win the title this season.