Jaipur Pink Panthers became the first team in Pro Kabaddi 2016 Season 4 to reach the semi-finals when they defeated defending champions Patna Pirates 29-22 in a thrilling game on Friday night in Mumbai. The game, which saw Jaipur steer clear of other teams at the top of the table, involved a lot of sparks and heated moments. Referee decisions came under the scanner and the winning team had a bone of contention with the same.
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Jasvir Singh, Jaipur’s captain and their main man on the night, spoke about the pace of the game, which made it difficult for the referee to be spot on with the decisions all the time. Speaking after the match, Jasvir said, "There was no controversy. There are some decisions that even the referee cant decide. It can only be decided through a review. You can see how fast the game is. So the referees sometime make mistakes. It happens. But we executed our plan as per whatever our coach instructed.”
The game started off on a cautious pace and Jaipur, after a lot of hard work and careful planning, took an early lead over Patna Pirates, who were looking to topple Jaipur on the top the points table by beating them. However, Patna remained in the hunt and kept pulling points back to cut the lead down. Tempers were flying around in Mumbai as both teams were looking to get the edge.
Patna went into the break with a two point lead and it would have reassured them about the result of the match but Jaipur Pink Panthers had other plans. The Jaipur team that came out in the second half started to play on the offensive and took the game to Patna, inducing errors from their defence, in particular Bajirao Hodage, who looked pretty off colour on the night.
Jaipur raced into a 22-18 lead by the time the game moved well into the second half and things were looking pretty bleak for Patna. A big reason why Patna lost the game was their destroyers-in-chief, Pardeep Narwal and Rajesh Mondal, not firing. The defensive combination of Ran Singh, Rajesh Narwal and Amit Hooda proved to be too much for Pardeep and Rajesh.
Another man who was superb on the night and key to Jaipur’s success was raider Ajay Kumar, who delivered points one after the other. He took seven points on the night and several of them came from do or die raid. He spoke after the match about his success with the do or die raids and credited the coach for having faith him him.
"I feel very good. The coach gave me an opportunity and trusted me. I'd like to thank him for that. He made me work extremely hard and I practiced a lot,” Ajay Kumar. Jaipur can now afford to relax with their qualification to the semi-final ensured but would not like to lose any sort of momentum before going into the business end of Pro Kabaddi 2016 Season 4.
