PKL 2018 | Patna coach credits defenders after their big win against Bengal

11/11/2018

PKL

Patna Pirates coach Ram Mehar Singh has lauded the efforts of the defensive unit after their one-sided victory against Bengal Warriors on Saturday. He further referred yesterday's game as an important win for them as they have now moved to the second position on the Zone B points table.

Patna Pirates outplayed their opponents Bengal Warriors in Mumbai yesterday as they won the second East India derby of the season by a huge margin of 50-30 points. The defenders put up a great show for the defending champions as they scored 15 tackle points in comparison to only 10 by their opposition side. Coach Ram Mehar Singh praised the Patna defenders for their exceptional show in yesterday’s game which won them the match against the Warriors.

“Today our defence performed very well. Whenever a team’s defence works along with their offence, it usually turns out to be a one-sided match. If your raiders don’t work, it will usually be a close match. Today, both our departments worked very well and hence the huge scoreline,” said the Pirates coach during the post-match press conference.

“We are usually dependent on Pardeep Narwal to get raid points for us in every situation. He wasn’t able to perform in a few matches this season and then got injured, so his morale got upset. Both of Bengal Warriors’ Corners were new so the plan was to mostly play on Do-or-Die raids and attack their Corners. This is something Deepak Narwal is good at. We always expect a Super 10 from Pardeep and he got one today as well even though he was returning from injury.”

With this win, the Pirates have moved on to the second position on the points table and the huge margin of the victory has also helped them to improve their score difference. The coach lamented the fact that they lost to Bengaluru Bulls and U Mumba by getting close to the finishing line but is happy with the big win against the Warriors.

“It was a big win, moving us to second on the table. We lost to Bengaluru Bulls in the last minute as well as to U Mumba. Those matches were winning opportunities for us which we couldn’t convert. So this feels good,” Singh explained.

Bengal Warriors badly missed a proper third raider as they had decided to go with Ran Singh as a proper raider before the game in the absence of Mahesh Goud. As both Maninder Singh and Jang Kun Lee had a poor outing yesterday, Ran was under tremendous pressure and the raiders together could contribute only 17 points in total as compared to 28 by the Pirates.

“I think that was the case. We didn’t do badly in the first half. There’s always hope that your raiders will score points. Pardeep Narwal didn’t score many points in the first half but Deepak Narwal’s performance hurt us. We wanted to slow the game down when we were raiding but we couldn’t manage to do that. That’s where we lost the game today,” said Jagdish Kumble, the coach of Bengal Warriors.

Speaking about their huge defeat, Bengal skipper Surjeet Singh explained, “Initially our defence was exchanging points with their defence. The pace of the game then became fast and we went on the backfoot. Had we slowed the pace of the game, giving our raiders chances to score more points, then maybe we would have had a different result.”

Get updates! Follow us on

Open all