PKL 2019 | How Gujarat Fortunegiants inflicted first defeat of season on Dabang Delhi KC
After a great show in the first three games of the season, Dabang Delhi KC faced a tough challenge in their fourth game from Gujarat Fortunegiants. Despite an impressive show by Naveen Kumar, the team from the national capital had a few loopholes which led to their first defeat this season.
Defensive lapses in Delhi camp
Dabang Delhi KC are considered to have one of the most experienced defensive units in the entire league with the likes of Joginder Narwal, Ravinder Pahal, and Vishal Mane. They even had the services of Saeid Ghaffari from Iran in their last two matches and had managed to win the game against Haryana Steelers because of some great understanding and well-thought tackles in the previous game. However, things were totally different when they took on Gujarat Fortunegiants in yesterday’s game. All the three experienced defenders had a bad day at the office and that affected the eventual result for the team as well.
The defensive lapses started in the seventh minute of the match when Mane stepped into the lobby without a touch from raider Sachin and gifted an easy extra point to the opponents. Again with eight minutes to go in the half, Pahal’s tentative ankle hold attempt against GB More in a Do or die raid gifted an easy one. The raider, on that occasion, had only seven seconds in hand and it was needless to go for an attempt by the right corner defender.
Things looked uglier in the second half when raider Chandran Ranjit went for an advance tackle on Rohit Gulia and with Pahal coming in for support, the raider managed to escape and got two more points. Skipper Joginder and Pahal also gifted a point each as their ankle hold attempts went wrong against Sachin and Gulia. Joginder’s another ankle hold try against Sachin helped him to escape with two points in a Do or die raid in the second half as he was quick enough to come out of the hold and Mane’s late arrival helped the raider get a second touch as well.
The step outs were not new in this game as we had seen some of them against Tamil Thalaivas earlier this season as well and Delhi players need to be careful about those. In yesterday’s game, Pahal had three unsuccessful tackles while Joginder and Mane had two each and the scorecard tells the fact that in spite of the heroics by Naveen, how important is the contribution from the experienced defence unit.
© PKLGujarat’s defence stepped up together
Pretty much like Dabang Delhi, Gujarat Fortunegiants are also considered as a team mostly dependent on their defenders, especially skipper Sunil Kumar and Parvesh Bhainswal. A team, which played with Ruturaj Koravi and Sachin Vittala at the two corner positions, is giving opportunities to youngsters Ankit at the right and Sumit Mallik at the left corner. When all eyes of the Delhi think tank was on the cover duo of Bhainswal and Sunil, the corner duo did their job pretty well and Gulia and GB More also had a great day in the defence like the raids.
There was no star defender on the match for Gujarat and More who is listed as a raider had the highest tackle points for them thanks to some excellent chain tackles. Sumit and More’s chain tackles became a good highlight of the game for Manpreet Singh and his boys. Sumit had also combined with Gulia in chain tackles and in one such effort resulted in bringing down Ranjit in one of the raids. Ankit, at the right corner, also looked good and although he got only one point to his name and that was a solo attempt towards the end against Ranjit. That was the last nail in the coffin for Delhi but had Ranjit came out off that strong thigh hold, he could have got 3-4 points in the single raid in the last minute of the match and Delhi could have got a lifeline in the game.
Overall it was a good show by the entire Gujarat side in the defence led by a raider More who got four tackle points. Bhainswal collected two points while all others on the mat, apart from Sachin, scored one each point in his tackles.
Off day for Naveen’s support system in raids
© PKLAt the halfway stage in the match, Dabang Delhi had a lead of three points with the scorecard reading 14-11 in their favour. Although Naveen had started on a bad note by getting out in his first raid, which was a Do or die one, he had a great day at the office for Dabang Delhi with a Super 10 performance again in this season. However, he lacked proper support from the two support raiders in the team Ranjit and Vijay who was included in place of Meraj Sheykh. Ranjit had collected three in the first half but remained completely silent in the second half and failed to collect even a single raid point which mounted more pressure on Naveen. Vijay, on the other hand, was tackled in the second minute of the second half by going too deep of the Gujarat mat by attempting a pursuit. Ranjit and Vijay’s lacklustre performance kept on adding more responsibility on Naveen to perform in the raids which eventually affected the team big time in the second half of the match.
Apart from these three, an all-out being inflicted in the second half had a huge impact in the game. With six minutes to go, Delhi was all-out and Gujarat managed to get a crucial five-point lead in the game and from that point, the Joginder-led side failed to recover and eventually had to taste their first defeat of the season.
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