PKL 2019 | Pawan Sehrawat is going to get different role this season, claims Randhir Singh

If you try to name the find of the season from the sixth edition of the Pro Kabaddi League, then the first name that comes to mind is that of Pawan Sehrawat. Although he had played in the league before, he came to limelight in the first game of the season for the Bulls when he was asked to raid ahead of skipper Rohit Kumar and he created magic by returning with 20 raid points against Tamil Thalaivas. He was the Best Raider of the tournament with a total of 271 raid points and had 11 tackle points as well.

“We have another player named Sumit Malik, who played a few games for us in the 2018 season and I think he is going to perform well for us this year. Otherwise, we have the Pawan-Rohit duo and I think they are making even better progress which makes our offense a formidable one.”

“We have retained around 90% of the previous year’s squad. As we are the defending champions, so we have decided not to tinker with our first 7. The good part this year is that we have got our home ground back. The previous year, our players had to travel a lot because we didn’t have one at that time. Also, if we had our home ground, then the triumph would have been more fruitful. Although we won the competition but we couldn’t enjoy the moment to the fullest as we couldn’t play in front of our own fans. We have been practising really well and I hope our team perform well this time,” the coach explained.

When asked about the pressure that he expects to be on the team during the matches this year, the title-winning coach said, “Pressure is always there. Last year all the experts thought us to be the 11th team in the competition and that 11th team ended up becoming champions. So, this year the experts will definitely put pressure by tagging us the “defending champions”.”

With Rohit and Pawan in the raiding unit, the focus for the team at the auctions was their defence. As Randhir said earlier that he retained most of the players, Raju Lal Chowdhury is most-likely to start for them at the right corner of the defence but they also have young players Vijay Kumar and Saurabh.

The Bulls have started practising for the upcoming edition of the league and they are currently in a camp in Chennai. Revealing that the side is yet to make an announcement on who is going to be their captain this year, Randhir said that he sees no reason to remove Rohit Kumar from captaincy. 

“Maximum chances are there that he would be the captain. The biggest part is, before the last season he was never a good captain. I tried to put my entire focus on him to develop his leadership skills. Since we have got so much success with him being the captain, why would we remove him from that position?”

“If you try to jump four steps at a time you might break your legs. So, I believe in going step by step. Our primary target is to qualify, then comes the semis. Our third objective is to play the final and lastly to lift the trophy.

“The players will get more rest because of this format. If you have noticed most of the top raiders were in the Pool B last time be it Rahul Chowdhuri, Ajay Thakur or Shrikant Jadhav. So, this anomaly has come to an end. Previously we had to play six home matches now we have to play only four. There will not be much physical pressure on the players this time,” Randhir signed off.