Pro Kabaddi Season 6: Team analysis of U Mumba
The VIVO Pro Kabaddi League Season 6 auctions took place on the 30th and 31st of May. The auctions saw a total of 422 players getting under the hammer out of which 181 players got divided into 12 teams.
Monu Goyat became the costliest player after being bought by Haryana Steelers for a whopping ₹151 lakhs. The crore club was also joined by Rahul Chaudhari, Deepak Hooda, Rishank Devadiga and Nitin Tomar.
Prashanth Rai became the most expensive player on the second day of the auctions after UP Yoddhas bought him for a hefty amount of ₹79 lakhs.
Fazel Atrachali became the priciest overseas player after U Mumba bought him for ₹100 lakhs. U Mumba's franchise gave us a lot of shockers during the auctions. Not buying back Anup Kumar was the biggest of them.
U Mumba won the Pro Kabaddi League in season 2. Till season 3, they were the fiercest team in the league. The season 4 auctions saw a lot of excellent Mumba players getting divided into other teams. That was when the grip of the Mumbai team's started to loosen. They did not even touch the qualifiers list last season.
Mumbai's franchise had Anup Kumar as team's captain and mentor since season 1. In season 6, it would be quite disappointing to see no Anup Kumar in U Mumba. Coach Edachery Bhaskaran also left the team to join Tamil Thalaivas.
Here is an expert analysis of U Mumba's full squad:
Raiders
There are nine raiders in total on the team. The Iranian Abolfazl Maghsoudlou is one of them. Abol has previously played in teams like Patna Pirates and Dabang Delhi.
He played his debut season from U Mumba where he did not take a single point in the three matches played by him.
Switching to Patna's team gave sufficient chances to prove himself. He is the top Iranian raider in the league.
Rohit Baliyan, who has previously played for Delhi's franchise will be seen donning U Mumba's orange-black t-shirt. He played well in Delhi and is expected to do the same for Mumba this time.
Patna's former player Vinod Kumar will also play for Mumbai. He played well during the initial days of season 5 but was not able to seal a spot in the team's starting seven throughout the season.
Even though Vinod is a good player, he will have to focus on his skills if he wants his team to win. Other young players including Darshan Kadian, R. Sriram, Siddharth Desai, Gaurav Kumar, Arjun Deshwal and Abhishek Singh will also play for U Mumba.
If we give a close look at the raiders on the team, it is quite disappointing. U Mumba is known for bringing up raiders like Rishank Devadiga and Anup Kumar. The team will have to work really hard throughout the season if they want to fix a spot in the finals.