The brave moment of the match belonged to U Mumba’s Surinder Singh as he pulled the raider back from the midline. Pardeep Narwal showed great fitness levels to overpower Patna’s defence and scored 17 raid points.
U Mumba clinched the win from Patna’s jaws to turn the initially slow game into an edge of the seat match in Vivo Pro Kabaddi League Season VI’s 36th match. A great performance by Pardeep Narwal to rack up 17 points got completely overshadowed by Siddharth Desai and Rohit Baliyan getting 15 and 11 points respectively for U Mumba. Fazal Atrachali also had a great game with 6 tackle points in his 10 tackle attempts to grab the Orange Band. Pardeep Narwal is now on 699 raid points in PKL history and will get a chance to reach 700 in tomorrow’s encounter.
Siddharth Desai started the match with a hand touch point as U Mumba got a great start of 2-0. Pardeep Narwal made a tremendous effort by getting Rohit Rana and Surinder Singh in the 4th minute to level the score to 4-4. The half started to slow down with both teams choosing to make empty raids. Dharmaraj Cheralathan made a Super Tackle effort on Manjeet to take the lead back to 6-5 in the 6th minute.
Both teams continued to work on making the other team work on Do-or-Die raids which worked for both the teams as Patna Pirates got a point with Rohit Baliyan made a failed attempt on a bonus point where he even used up the Team Review. While on the other half of the court Fazal Atrachali made a great waist hold on Pardeep Narwal to make a Super Tackle in the 12th minute and increase the lead to 10-7. Siddharth Desai was out of the court for a large portion of the match which led to U Mumba conceding an all out in the 18th minute as Vinod Kumar was dashed by Vikas Kale to take the score to 12-14 only to lose it by the end of the half. The half ended with both teams tying on 14-14.
The second half saw Patna runaway with a lead as the “Dupki King” Pardeep Narwal used his Dupki against Surinder Singh and Rohit Rana to clinch 2 points. He followed it up with a last minute fingertips crossing of the midline against Fazal Atrachali and Dharmaraj Cheralathan’s strangling hands in the 25th minute. He achieved his Super 10 and an All Out against U Mumba with this raid to lead them with 18-25.
U Mumba weren’t going to let Patna Pirates defeat them so easily and thus made great tackles like the pull by Fazal Atrachali in the 26th minute from the midline on Vijay. Siddharth Desai not being on the mat didn’t effect U Mumba much as they continued to comeback even after the chain hold by Jaideep and Vikas Kale in the 30th minute. Vikas Jaglan made a great Super Raid taking away Surinder Singh, Fazal Atrachali and Rohit Rana in the 36th minute to make the score 32-36. But Siddharth Desai’s 37th minute raid shifted the momentum as he took a touch point on Vikas Kale and a bonus point to make it 35-37.
Pardeep Narwal’s unsuccesful raid in the 37th minute led to Patna’s downfall as his absence cost them the match. With no Pardeep Narwal on the mat, Fazal’s team clinched the moment to make a last minute comeback and win the match 40-39.
In tomorrow’s matches, Delhi Dabang K.C. will face UP Yoddha while the host Patna Pirates will face Haryana Steelers.
