PKL 2019 | Over dependence on Nitin Tomar might cost Puneri Paltan title

PKL 2019 | Over dependence on Nitin Tomar might cost Puneri Paltan title

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PKL

Puneri Paltan is leading the Zone A Points Table with 25 points from seven games and has four wins, two defeats and one tie so far. With the home leg in progress, they would like to be on the top of the table in the zone and the raiding form of Nitin Tomar matters a lot for the team from Pune.

Puneri Paltan has been impressive with the way they have performed so far in the sixth season of the Pro Kabaddi League. The franchise made some significant changes to their plans from the last season by bringing in Arjuna Award-winning former international player Ashan Kumar as their new coach for the current season and one of the major additions to the raiding department is the inclusion of Nitin Tomar - the most expensive player from a year ago. Since the beginning of the league this year, Tomar has been the only raider who has secured points consistently for the team while retained players like Rajesh Mondal and GB More have struggled in putting points on the board. 

With an aim of strengthening their raiding department, the franchise bought Tomar for Rs 1.15 crore in the auction before the start of the tournament. He was the skipper of the newly-included UP Yoddha side in the 2017 season of PKL and had a good performance in the tournament with a total of 167 raid points from 20 games. UP Yoddha went into the playoffs and finished fifth in the competition and along with Rishank Devadiga, he formed a deadly raiding pair for the team. The Pune think-tank went for Tomar at the auctions as they wanted a player who can raid from his left side. 

Speaking to SportsCafe, Pune coach Ashan Kumar said, “During auctions, we had a clear strategy, to get one good left raider who we could depend on and hence we roped in Nitin Tomar into our team.” 

Tomar hasn’t disappointed the team management either and has been very impressive with 78 raid points from seven games which include 4 Super 10s in the season so far. With an average of more than 10 points in a game, Tomar’s presence has played a major role in Pune’s success this season. His quick footwork and swift movement on the mat during crucial raids have made him a successful raider in the season. 

“Nitin Tomar is a very good raider and he knows how to gain points in different match scenarios and raids very smartly. Nitin has performed to the best of his abilities in all the matches and will continue to do so. Deepak Dahiya, More GB, Rajesh Mondal are support raiders,” Ashan replied when asked about Tomar’s importance in the team.

But there lies the problem for Puneri Paltan as neither of the support raiders has anything substantial to show with their performance in the season. Experienced Rajesh Mondal, GB More and young Deepak Dahiya have struggled. Pune’s rate of successful raids drastically reduces whenever Tomar goes off the mat during a game. Let’s take an example of their game against Gujarat Fortunegiants, where Tomar was off the mat for around 15 minutes and Pune struggled like anything to get points during their raids in the second half. Tomar had already completed his Super 10 in the first half and Gujarat worked out with the strategy of keeping Tomar off the mat. Consecutive empty raids forced more Do or Die raids where the other raiders messed it up. Only Deepak had three touch points while Mondal and More failed to get a raid point in that game. More has scored 12 points from seven games while Mondal has only eight from four and that means they haven’t performed as per their reputation. 

Another issue that the team might face is Tomar’s raiding style as he is a left-handed raider. So, when Pune faces a team having good right corners like Abozar Mighani from Telugu Titans, he might be in a spot of bother. We have already seen how his impact was nullified by the Jaipur Pink Panthers as they had one of India’s finest right corners in the form of Mohit Chhillar. Tomar had only one touch point in the entire match and Pune’s defence came up to their rescue with six Super Tackles in that game. Monu was the only raider in that game who could manage to secure five touch points.

It will be tougher for Tomar when Pune meets Telugu Titans in this season as Mighani is in a very good form. With his powerful ankle holds and body blocks he has got 18 tackle points to his name in only four matches so far. He is expected to trouble Tomar whenever they face and that duel will be an exciting one to watch out for.

Pune needs to come up with new strategies if there is a rare failure from Tomar or he stays off the mat in any of their upcoming games. Other raiders will have a lot to do in those games and that will take a lot of doing for the raiders from Pune. Monu and Deepak have shown some promise in the raiding department and they would expect them to come up with surprising performances in those encounters for Pune.

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