PKL 2019 | Result was not as important as having our players completely fit, says Krishan Kumar Hooda

Dabang Delhi played out a thrilling tie in their last game of the league stage on Friday. As both the teams have already made it to the playoffs, they didn’t play to their full strength last evening. Delhi decided to give their regular skipper Joginder Narwal a break and it was Meraj Sheykh who led the side and Chandran Ranjit was seen at the crucial left corner position on the mat.

Talking about the result and playing with a fresh team, Delhi coach Krishan Kumar Hooda said that he was not having the result in mind for the last league game and was more concerned about the fitness of the players.

“The result was not as important as having our players completely fit and injury-free before the playoffs. I told them not to push too hard. We took this as a practice match. After a point we even asked Naveen not to raid too much because we wanted to try out Meraj Sheykh and Chandran Ranjit. So that was according to the strategy,” Hooda told reporters after the match.

Delhi had gone into the first game of the UP leg against the home team with a completely new side and were beaten by UP Yoddha last week. In their last league game, however, it was only the skipper Joginder who sat out while all the others had a decent time on the mat. 

When asked about not having the winning momentum going into the playoffs, the Delhi coach explained, “In the previous matches I had used my bench players so I don’t think this will affect our momentum.”