Pro Kabaddi 2019: Top 5 raiders to watch out for
The seventh season of the Pro Kabaddi League will commence from the 20th of July at the Gachibowli Indoor Stadium in Hyderabad as the Telugu Titans will be facing off against U Mumba in the opening fixture of the season.
Pro Kabaddi 2019 will see a double-robin round format with no zonal or interzonal matches in this edition. Twelve franchises will compete against each other in a three-month-long format, with the final scheduled in the month of October.
At the season 7 auctions which took place on the 8th and 9th of April, Siddharth Sirish Desai became the costliest player as the Telugu Titans bagged him for a whopping ₹145 lakh. Rahul Chaudhari, who represented the Telugu Titans for all six seasons was bought by the Tamil Thalaivas for ₹94 lakh.
Monu Goyat went to the UP Yoddha for ₹93 lakh while they also used their FBM card to re-procure the services of ace raider Rishank Devadiga for just ₹61 lakhs, which was a steal deal.
Mohammad Esmaeil Nabibaksh became the costliest foreign player from the PKL 7 auctions after the Bengal Warriors sealed the deal for ₹77.75 lakh. Telugu Titans' management did well to retain the services of their defensive stalwarts from last season Abozar Mighani and Vishal Bhardwaj.
Let us now have a look at the top five raiders to watch out for from Pro Kabaddi 2019.
#5 Maninder Singh - Bengal Warriors
Maninder Singh featured in the inaugural edition of the league as he represented the Jaipur Pink Panthers and played a big part in Jaipur's title win. However, a bout of injuries hit him hard as he missed out on the next three seasons and only returned for the fifth season, when he was signed up by the Bengal Warriors.
One of the quickest raiders on the mat, Maninder has gathered a total of 535 points in 59 matches till date. He was also a part of the Indian team that won the 2017 Asian Kabaddi Championship.
From scoring the most raid points for Jaipur Pink Panthers in PKL 2014 to finishing as the Bengal Warriors’ leading raider in PKL 2017, Maninder has done it all. For PKL 7, with Maninder announced as the captain, all hopes will be pinned on him to lead the Warriors to a title win.