PKL 2019 | Had sizeable lead, so we wanted to try out some of our bench players, admits Jasveer Singh

UP Yoddha had a great start to their game against Telugu Titans in their last home game last evening as they had a lead of 20-14 at the half-time. They also maintained their dominance in the second half and at one point of time were 14 points ahead of the Titans.

However, chief coach Jasveer Singh made some changes in the team in the second half and brought in new faces. After that, the team lost their way and the Hyderabad-based franchise managed to beat them at the end. 

“We had a sizeable lead, so we wanted to try out some of our bench players. They weren’t able to handle the situation from there. They were hurried in defence which cost us the lead and the match,” Jasveer said after the match.

“He (Monu Goyat) should have at least taken a bonus point during some of those raids. There wasn’t much time left for them to come back so even if we got bonus points, we would have had more of a lead to protect.”

Skipper Nitesh Kumar, who had a good outing along with Sumit (5) with four tackle points in the defence, also talked about the mistakes in the defence in the last few minutes which affected the result. Iranian Mohsen Maghsoudlou, Gurdeep and Aashish Nagar were brought in by the coach as substitutes along with raider Ankush in the last game.

“The team was doing very well in the beginning. We had managed to hold onto our lead even after halftime. But the errors we made in defence in the final 10 minutes cost us the match as we weren’t able to see off their challenge after that,” Nitesh said during the press conference.