PKL 2019 | Abhishek Singh was exceptional against Puneri Paltan, says Sanjeev Kumar

U Mumba started off their home leg with a bang as they won the high voltage Maharashtra Derby by a good margin of 33-23 points against Puneri Paltan on Saturday. Abhishek Singh was the top raider for the team in a game that was dominated by the defenders from the very beginning. Abhishek had collected five points in the match and Mumba coach Sanjeev Kumar heaped praise on the youngster for his impressive show last evening.

“He (Abhishek) has performed well in all three matches and today, too, he was exceptional. He also contributed with some crucial Do-or-Die raids which were extremely important to us. So far, he has exceeded expectations this season,” Sanjeev said during the press conference.

“Everything went as expected. Our plan at the start was not to go too deep (while raiding) and we controlled our game as per that plan.”

The match between the two neighboring cities started on a slower note as compared to other games as both the teams had some quality defenders. Fazel Atrachali and Sandeep Narwal were in the defensive line up of the home team, while Surjeet Singh and Girish Ernak were the two important defenders in the Paltan. Explaining about the game plan in yesterday’s match, Sanjeev said that the teams were conservative in the start.

“We were conservative at the start and raided with caution. That was the plan. We didn’t attack aggressively like we did in the last match and stuck to our plans. Last game, we were under pressure and played aggressively, which led to mistakes. However, we learnt from our mistakes and stuck to the plan that we devised for this game,” the U Mumba coach explained.

“There were no turning points in the match. We just followed the game-plan throughout and there was no particular raid that was the turning point. It took us about 20 minutes or so to gain an advantage.”