PKL 2019 | There’s still room for improvement in Gujarat Fortunegiants, believes Manpreet Singh
After yesterday’s win against home team Bengaluru, Gujarat Fortunegiants' coach Manpreet Singh believes that there is room for improvement in the team. The Gujarat coach also talked about their defensive strategies because of which they were able to keep Bulls' star raider Pawan Sehrawat quiet.
Gujarat Fortunegiants repeated their magic from the first game against the Bulls in the previous match as well and managed to get the better of the home team on Saturday. They won against Bengaluru Bulls again with a scoreline of 23-32 in a well-fought battle. In the starting of the match, it felt if it's going to be raiders game as almost every raider got points in the first few minutes. The momentum shifted to Gujarat’s side after GB More ousted four players in his two successive raids. After that Gujarat was easily able to inflict an all-out and finished the first half with a six-point lead.
“Since Season 5, our strength has been teamwork. When there’s no teamwork, we struggle. We saw the tandem today that we hadn’t in the past few weeks. There’s still room for improvement,” Gujarat Fortunegiants coach Manpreet Singh said in the post-match press conference.
Gujarat’s defenders were on top of their game since the start of the match as they were able to keep both Rohit Kumar and Pawan Sehrawat quite in the first half. Pawan got two points in the first half and between his second and third points, he got out in defence and offence combined. Pawan who has scored 128 points in 11 matches was only able to score three points in this match. That was one of the biggest reasons in Gujarat’s win.
“Pawan is someone who won’t settle for an empty raid. He’s a machine and his singular focus is scoring points. And aggression usually struggle against Gujarat Fortunegiants. Our defence knows how to combat raiders that rely heavily on touch points,” Manpreet said while talking about Pawan's performance.
The way the game is, it’s important for everyone to contribute. Raiders that don’t contribute to the defence are playing on teams that aren’t exactly doing well. So, it’s important for raiders to be able to tackle and contribute defensively."
Gujarat had already won against Bengaluru Bulls by 18 points in their first meeting earlier this season and even though in this match it was half the point difference, Bengaluru didn’t seem very confident. Gujarat is now ahead of Bengaluru in head to head record as they lost only twice against them one of which included last year’s final.
“We can’t dwell in the past. The final, the past seven matches. I let bygones be bygones. I focus on what we can do to affect our current results. What we can do during raids, tackles. So, we weren’t looking for redemption,” Manpreet concluded.