Pro Kabbadi League 2018, Match 33: Patna Pirates vs Jaipur Pink Panthers Review| 26 October 2018
Pro Kabaddi League, Season 6, Patna Leg started with a bang where Patna Pirates show us how a perfect first home game looks like. The first match in this series saw the defending champions go up against Jaipur Pink Panthers.
With Pardeep Narwal, the Dubki King, as the Captain of Patna Pirates and Anup Kumar leading the Jaipur Pink Panthers, we were definitely sure that match would be a challenging one.
At this point, let us once again remember how Pardeep Narwal scored 34 raid points in a single match, in the previous season. Jaipur Pink Panthers should’ve had a good strategy to fight this game against Pardeep Narwal if they had to win this match.
Starting 7:
Patna Pirates – Pardeep Narwal, Manjeet, Vikas Kale, Jaideep, Vijay, Jawahar, and Vikas Jaglan
Jaipur Pink Panthers – Deepak Hooda, Anup Kumar, Sunil Siddhgavali, Ajinkya Pawar, Mohit Chhillar, Selvamani K, and Sandeep Dhull.
Both the teams had a relatively new raider in their team, Manjeet for Patna Pirates and Ajinkya for Jaipur Pink Panthers.
Both the teams used their substitutes as well. While Patna Pirates called in Manish, Jaipur Pink Panthers substituted with Ajit Singh, Amit Kumar and, Gandhari Mallesh.
The toss was won by Jaipur Pink Panther who chose the court. The match started and Patna Pirates took the first point, in their very first raid. Jaipur Pink Panthers returned the favor by tackling Pardeep Narwal in his second raid.
The Panthers seemed to be following a strategy of keeping Pardeep Narwal out of the court. But, the match kept changing its pace.
Not even five minutes into the match and Pardeep Narwal made a Super Raid and took three points making Patna Pirates score rise to five. Anup Kumar too responded with a Super Raid of his own, as he crossed his 500 mark in PKL career with this one.
The match was intense since the very beginning. Just nine minutes into this match and Pardeep Narwal attempted the second Super Raid of the night, raising Patna Pirates score by three points.
At the stroke of half-time, there was a difference of seven points between the teams. Patna Pirates was leading Jaipur Pink Panthers with a score of 22- 15. Not to forget, there had already been three Super Raids of the night by this time.
After halftime, the first entry was done by Ajit from Jaipur Pink Panthers who got tackled. But, Jaipur Pink Panthers was not going to just sit and watch the match get out of their hands. They did a super tackle in return by tackling Pardeep Narwal.
Anup Kumar used the first five minutes after the break to turn around the game a little bit, and brought the difference of sevn points in the score to just four, taking full advantage of Pardeep Narwal’s absence on the court.
With 11 minutes remaining in the match, Patna Pirates got a green card for aggressive tackling.
Second all out happened with nine minutes remaining and a difference of 12 points with Patna leading at 33.
Pardeep Narwal had already scored 11 raid points so far in the match and had been instrumental in keeping Patna ahead. With the second all out, they almost settled the match.
The Pink Panthers did a super raid, raising their score to 25 and reducing the difference to 9 points. With 5 minutes left, there was still a difference of 13 points between the teams. With the last minute left, Pardeep Narwal gets substituted and Patna Pirates did a super tackle.
The match ends with Patna Pirates scoring 41 and Jaipur Pink Panthers 30. Patna Pirates also moved to second place in Zone B after this match.
The best raider of the match was Pardeep Narwal with 11 successful raid points. The best defender of the match was Vikas Kale with a High 5 in defense.
Deepak Niwas Hooda and Anup Kumar were not able to get their A game to the mat tonight. Patna Pirates raiders simply ran away with the match. It is going to take a herculean effort for any team to stop this Patna juggernaut on their home turf.