PKL 2019 | Dabang Delhi vs Bengal Warriors - Good, Bad and Ugly ft. Naveen Kumar, Ravinder Pahal and K Prapanjan

Good 

The good thing for Delhi is that they have a player who has not only performed consistently from the last season, but has also shown continuous improvement as well. The youngster is taking up the responsibility of the entire team, which also has experienced defenders like Joginder Narwal, Ravinder Pahal, and Vishal Mane, and is also not getting bogged down under pressure. Naveen managed to keep his side in contest in the second half at a time when the defence was leaking points. Naveen was only tackled twice in the last game and his brilliant not-out percentage is still intact. 

Vishal Mane and Ravinder Pahal’s unsuccessful tackles

At one end, the raiding combination of Chandran Ranjit and Naveen doing wonders at the other end, it is their defence that kept on giving away easy points to K Prapanjan and Sukesh Hegde. It was a combined bad show by Ravinder Pahal and Vishal Mane that hampered Delhi’s cause against Bengal last evening and that is a cause of concern for Krishan Kumar Hooda. After going for five unsuccessful tackle attempts in the last game against Puneri Paltan, Pahal had four of them against Bengal. On the other hand, Mane went for three tackle attempts and failed to get those right.

With 10 minutes to go in the game, Mane lost his balance in Nabibakhsh’s raid and had to go off the mat. In the same raid, the Iranian had also got a touch on Pahal by pushing the right corner too deep and taking a touch on him. Not only these two, but Iranian cover Saeid Ghaffari was also involved in a poor tackle attempt against Prapanjan which was initiated by Pahal. The Bengal raider had got a bonus as well and that super raid gave a three-point lead for the Warriors as well. Bengal managed to extend the lead with 2:50 minutes to go in the match when Pahal decided to dive on to the ankle of Prapanjan and eventually ended up gifting away an easy point. 

Ugly

K Prapanjan’s act against the spirit of kabaddi

But, with more competition and more pressure of winning matches in the PKL, we are seeing players deviating away from the “spirit of kabaddi” which is making things ugly on the mat. With Bengal leading 30-29, the last raid of the match was a do or die raid and K Prapanjan came in for that. Just after a few seconds, he attempted a running hand touch on cover defender Ghaffari and was confident of getting the touch as well. Prapanjan claimed the touch and went to stand near the midline while on the other hand, Ghaffari was not convinced at all and kept on claiming that there was no touch.

After the on-field officials went with the Warriors, Delhi went for the review as they, fortunately, had it till the end of the match. The TV replays clearly showed that there was daylight between Ghaffari’s knee and Prapanjan’s finger and the decision was reversed resulting in the game ending in a tie. These incidents are slowly becoming common in the sport these days and that is where the fair play, that many kabaddi payers are proud off, is vanishing from the league.