Patna Pirates stun U Mumba to lift Pro Kabaddi title

Starting Seven:

After handing out a thrashing to Bengal Warriors, defending champions U Mumba came into the all-important final in search of their second successive Pro Kabaddi League title. U Mumba opted to remain unchanged from the team that took on Bengal Warriors in the semis with skipper Anup Kumar and Rishank Devadiga shouldering the responsibility of scoring the points.

U Mumba skipper Anup Kumar got the match off to a start by earning a bonus with the very first raid. However, the defending champions’ hopes of a good start went in smokes with raiders Rakesh Kumar and Rishank Devadiga returning to the bench after getting tackled. Patna replaced star raider Pardeep Narwal with Rajesh Mondal in the fourth minute after a suffering a shoulder injury. But Rohit Kumar kept Patna’s scoreboard ticking with a super raid by touching Fazel Atrachali and Mohit Chhillar to enforce the all-out.

The defending champions scored just three points in the first ten minutes while Patna Pirates raced off to 12 points. As the match continued, Rajesh Mondal, who replaced Pardeep Narwal, and Rohit Kumar continued their point scoring run with the U Mumba defence in shatters. In fact, Fazel Atrachali and Mohit Chhillar, who looked the best defenders in the league stage, waited till the 14th minute to score the first tackle point.

But, Rohit Kumar came into the match with a mission to destroy the U Mumba defence and continued to do so with a super raid where he touched Vishal Mane, Fazel Atrachali and Jeeva Kumar. With the defending champions looking lost in the defence, U Mumba replaced Jeeva Kumar with Surender Nada in a bid to make a comeback into the match. The arrival of Surender Nada re-energised the U Mumda defence and they added four points in the dying minutes of the first half to cut the gap on Patna Pirates. But, Patna still went into the break with an eight-point lead in what was an excellent display of Kabaddi.

Leading 19-11, Patna was on the driving seat for the final twenty minutes and took a safety approach by going for empty raids. In the first five minutes of the second half, only four points were scored with both teams banking on their defences. When the title was slowly drifting away from U Mumba, with Anup Kumar sitting on the bench after getting tackled, Shabeer Bappu turned the match on its head with a single raid. The U Mumba raider evaded Sandeep Narwal’s tackle and touched Sunil Kumar on the way to claim two points for his side. With only two players on the mat, Patna Pirates suffered their first all-out of the game after Gurvinder Singh got tackled by Rakesh Kumar.

(Read about the history of Kabaddi - The Rise of an Ancient Sport- Kabaddi)