PKL 2019 | Rahul Chaudhari was playing well so I didn’t raid much, says Ajay Thakur

Tamil Thalaivas had to taste a 33-27 defeat at the hands of Bengaluru Bulls at the Kanteerava Stadium on Sunday and the two major raiders Ajay Thakur and Rahul Chaudhari had a tough outing against the defending champions. Although Chaudhari ended up with eight points, the skipper managed to score only four. Describing his own performance, Thakur said that he sent Chaudhari for more raids as the latter was in-form as compared to the captain.

“If each raider does a single raid at a time, it doesn’t help in building the confidence of a player. As Rahul was playing well today, I didn’t raid much in the first half because he was successful. If I would have stopped him his momentum would have been broken so that is why I didn’t go for raids. Similarly, in the last match, I was scoring and Rahul was not going for more raids,” Thakur told reporters after the match.

Bengaluru had a great day on the field and not only their two raiders Rohit Kumar and Pawan Sehrawat but also the defence put in a good show in front of their home crowd. Thakur talked about the importance of the super tackles which went against his team from the beginning of the game on Sunday.

“First mistake happened when I got super tackled when there were three players on their side. If I was not super tackled, we would have been in the lead and secondly in defence, when we were unable to inflict a super tackle and gave Pawan two points,” the Thalaivas’ captain mentioned.

Tamil Thalaivas will take on Telugu Titans in their next game in another Southern Derby tomorrow and Tamil coach E Bhaskaran doesn’t want to make any significant changes in the starting 7. He, however, stated that it is important to strengthen their defence.

“No, what I believe is we will only play two raiders and make our defence strong and if you noticed, they didn’t get any bonuses in the first half. If I would have kept Ajith or Shabeer, it would have misbalanced our defence. So at halftime, our plan was to support them but that our coordination broke in the second half and we weren’t able to do that. 

“Where the big name is concerned that doesn’t matter to me as they have to perform and prove themselves as Ajay did in the last match and Rahul did in this one. We are getting points but it is just that, we have to better our coordination in the end minutes and win in that situations,” Bhaskaran explained.