PKL 2019 | Defence repeated some of the mistakes from previous matches, says Anup Kumar
Puneri Paltan’s coach Anup Kumar has said that the comeback by his team was phenomenal even though they lost as the defense repeated their past mistakes. This was Puneri Paltan’s sixth loss out of 10 matches they have played so far and they are currently second last on the points table.
Puneri Paltan took a while to navigate their way in their game against UP Yoddha on Monday and that cost them the game. They lost by a five-point margin as UP Yoddha got an early lead. Puneri Paltan was found lacking in the defence and because of that, they got all-out 11 minutes into the game. They ended the first half lagging behind by 16-9. Out of the 10 players, who got a chance to play, only five were able to score points. They did write a comeback script but eventually, it went in vain.
“It was an excellent game from start to finish. To comeback like we did was phenomenal. A lot of the credit goes to Manjeet. As far as the defence goes, the unit played extremely well in the past two matches but repeated some of the mistakes from the previous matches today,” coach Anup Kumar said in the post-match press conference.
The raiding department was collectively able to score 19 points out of which 16 were scored by Manjeet. He scored 51 per cent of the total team’s score. He lacked support in raiding as ‘super sub’ Pankaj Mohite was only able to score two points. Whereas Nitin Tomar was not even in the 12 players selected for the game.
“We only field players that have been doing well in training. It’s not about giving this player a chance or showing bias towards another. It’s about doing well in practice,” Anup Kumar said talking about team’s combinations.
Players like Girish Ernak, Hadi Tajik, skipper Surjeet Singh and Sagar Krishna failed to score even a single point in the defence. The team made as many as 19 unsuccessful tackle attempts and was able to score only eight points. The highest scorer was Balashaheb Jadhav who finished the match with four tackle points. Puneri Paltan did have a chance to win the match if they would have been able to inflict an all-out towards the end but because of their hurried defence missed those crucial points.
“We did well to cut down their lead to just two, but we showed impatience in defence during those last two minutes and that probably cost us the game,” Manjeet signed off.
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