PKL 2017 | Gujarat begin their home campaign with a brilliant win over U Mumba

Gujarat Fortunegiants take a heavy lead in the first half

Gujarat Fortunegiants won the toss and chose the court which meant U Mumba would raid first and their skipper Anup Kumar came for the raid. After one round of empty raids Gujarat’s skipper Sukesh Hegde opened the tally for the team with a hand touch on Kuldeep Singh at the left corner. After the five minutes of the game, Gujarat raced to a 4-0 lead and in the process, sent Shabeer Bapu to the bench as well. In what was a super tackle chance for the Mumbai team, Sachin sent Mumbai’s two raiders to the bench and soon imposed their first all-out of the game on Mumab at 9-1. With only nine minutes to go in the first half, Gujarat had already enjoyed an 11-4 lead. The Mumbai-based team seemed clueless as they were unable to get points in the front of the strong defence of Gujarat. Gujarat kept their dominance going as Bapu was brought down by a combination of body blows. However, Mumbai defence gave their fans something to cheer about as Renjith was pinned to the mat in the left corner before Anup Kumar secured a bonus point for the team with a textbook move of his own. But it was too little too late for the visitors to make a statement as Gujarat raced to a 14-point lead at 20-6.

Gujarat secure a comprehensive win 

With a huge deficit of 14 points on Mumba, they needed to get some quick points and Anup Kumar did exactly that as he got two points at the start of the second half. But, on the other hand, Gujarat also managed to get two points to keep the 14-point difference intact. Soon Hegde remained successful in earning two more points as he overcame Mumbai’s poor ankle hold. But in the next raid, Hegde failed to overcome the Kashiling Adake tackle as with a diving ankle hold, Mumba defender helped his team earn two points through the super tackle, which took the scorecard to 25-11. Further, Sachin extended Gujarat’s dominance as Sunil failed to get hold of the raider and then Gujarat’s Nitin Madane crashed down by Gujarat defense as the teams went into the timeout 26-13. Champion of the second PKL season, U Mumba, terribly disappointed their fans as they seemed unable to add points in their tally while Gujarat easily increased their score to 28-15. After a failed attempt to secure a raid point, Kashiling Adake was brilliantly sent to the bench by Rohit Gulia, who did a successful pursuit. Gulia again successfully got two points in his do or die raid and Gujarat enjoyed a 15-point lead at 36-19 and inflicted the third all-out of the game to take the score to 37-20 before eventually winning the game by 39-21.