Bengaluru Raptors delight the home crowd, win the Vodafone PBL Season-4 title

Bengaluru Raptors win their maiden title in Premier Badminton League 2018-19 here on their home ground in Koramangala Indoor Stadium in Bengaluru on Sunday. They beat the Mumbai Rockets by 4-3 in the overall final tie.

The tie started on a high note as the Mumbai Rockets won their trump match of Mixed Doubles. Kim Gi Jung and Pia Zebadiah Bernadeth won their match by 15-8, 15-14 in two straight games against English pair Marcus Ellis and Lauren Smith and took the initial lead by 2-0.

Kidambi Srikanth

In the second match, Indian Star player Kidambi Srikanth continued his winning streak in this season and beat Anders Antonsen of Denmark by 15-7, 15-10. With this win, Bengaluru closed the gap by one point by 2-1. Kidambi Srikanth displayed a very solid performance in the whole tournament by winning all his matches of the entire season. He won a total eight matches that he played.

Next, in the women's singles, Thi Trang Vu beat Sriyanshi Pardeshi by 15-8, 15-9. It was the trump match of Bengaluru in women's singles and with this win, they take the lead by 3-2 in the final tie.

However, B. Sai Praneeth lost to in form Sameer Verma of Mumbai Rockets in three sets in the second men's singles. Sai won the first set by 15-7 but lost the second set by 12-15 and the third set by 3-15, he was nowhere near to his best form and lost the opportunity to seal the tie against Mumbai. It all depended on the final and deciding match as the scores were levelled at 3-3.

Sameer Verma

In the fifth and final match, Bengaluru Raptors took the advantage of the multiple world champion and an experienced pair from Indonesia of Mohammad Ahsan and Hendra Setiawan. They won by 15-13, 15-10 against Korean combination Lee Yong Dae and Kim Gi Jung.

This was the first title for Bengaluru Raptors with three crores Indian rupee prize money in Premier Badminton League while Mumbai fail to gain the title for the second time in the league.