PKL 2019 | U Mumba have good combination in defence : Fazel Atrachali

U Mumba had a great season in the previous edition of the league but in the seventh edition, they have failed to replicate their last season's performance. Although their raiding unit is a young one, they have a lot of experience in their defensive unit with the likes of skipper Fazel Atrachali and Sandeep Narwal at the corner positions. They also have Surinder Singh at the cover position who is looking good in the tournament so far. 

“We have a lot of raiders like Arjun (Deshwal), Baliyan (Rohit), Abhishek Singh etc. Every match we have a different idea and different planning and use different raiders. They are young and are playing well. I think we have two more months and in the future, they will do well.”

“I am feeling really well and so are the players. We had two wins and two defeats in the home leg and that was a good feeling as well. We saw Patna and Telugu not doing that well at home. Our performance was not bad and this is good as we keep looking forward to another match,” the left corner defender opined. 

“Match is important and the game is important not the players. We need only points, sometimes the raiders do well and sometimes the defenders. We decided to send in Surinder and he got four points for us. That was good,” the Mumba skipper explained.

Elaborating further about the right cover defender, the Iranian said that he has got more matured and is not going for rash tackles for which he was earlier infamous in the league. Surinder has 24 tackle points from seven matches and he is their best defender so far.

Iran has produced some of the world-class corner defenders like Atrachali and Abozar Mighani who took the league by storm in the previous seasons. They also have players like Mohammad Nabibakhsh who is brilliant in the raids and tackles and is a member of the Bengal side in the ongoing season. Atrachali also spoke about the impact of the league and the Iranian team winning the Asian Games gold in his country.

“As we won the gold medal in the Asian Games, kabaddi is more popular and now people follow kabaddi more. In Iran, they are playing the sport professionally for the last 20-30 years. There was a game similar to kabaddi before but that had a different name and different rules. Now because of Asian Games and Pro Kabaddi, the people are more interested in kabaddi and now we have more players.”