Pro Kabaddi League 2017 Season 5 : U Mumba's Shabeer Bapu takes responsibility for the team's loss 

On Friday, Puneri Paltan handed a lesson to U Mumba as they completely dismantled Anup and co. with a fine all-round performance. Managing to score a mere 11 raid points in total, U Mumba went down 33-21 to a much better Pune side. Post the match, Shabeer Bapu spoke to Sportskeeda and took responsibility for the loss.

“The entire team didn’t play well, I take responsibility because I committed a lot of mistakes. We lost the match only because of our mistakes.”

All eyes were on Shabeer who was playing for the first time post his hand injury which caused him a lot of trouble in the previous season. But it wasn’t the dream comeback that Shabeer and his peers would have envisioned. Bapu found it tough to get going from the very beginning.

“Whenever I attempted a raid, I got out. Our coach Bhaskaran is not at fault for this. He kept motivating us. Now I am fully fit this year and this is my first match (post injury). I had fractured my hand around a couple of years back. My hand broke during a match so it took a little time,” he said.

Bapu suggested that there were times when he still played matches for U Mumba and Jaipur Pink Panthers despite his injury. One could always spot his right arm heavily strapped, despite which he attempted to play.

“Post recovery this is my first match, I used to play with the injured hand but couldn’t really perform on the mat,” he stated.

Captain, Anup Kumar previously told Sportskeeda that he won’t be a primary raider for U Mumba this time and will leave it to the others to attack and Shabeer agreed with Kumar’s assessment.

“Anup is right, see I am fully fit and we have 4-5 good raiders. It’s important that Anup stays on the mat, he can control the team. That is why we must take the responsibility of raiding,” he explained.

Shabeer shrugged off suggestions that U Mumba’s defence are a problem given the fact that this is a completely new look defence. Over the last two seasons, Mumbai have lost all their quality defenders to opposition teams.

“This is only our first match, it takes time to get the team combination right, maybe that’s why the defence was loose,” he signed off.