Telugu Titans continued their dream run as they extended their streak to four wins that helped them perch on the top of the Pro Kabaddi Season 4 league table. The team facing the defeat this time were Puneri Paltan who had defeated the Titans in the inaugural match of the fourth season.
Led by Joginder Narwal in the absence of their talismanic skipper Manjeet Chhillar, the Paltan squandered a first half lead in the face of some brilliant individual performances by Titans’ skipper Rahul Chaudhari and all-rounder Sandeep Narwal to go down by 3 points in the end.
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If Rahul Chaudhari’s first raid got his team points, the first raid for the Paltan proved to be a super raid by Ajay Thakur to give them three points. This advantage was something they would keep in the first half as Titans made some silly errors in the defence to give easy raid points to Deepak Niwas Hooda.
Seeing his team lagging behind, Rahul Chaudhari took most of the raids for the Titans, but couldn’t prevent a very early All Out on Telugu Titans.
The defence gradually started to get its act together and Sandeep Dhull and Vinod gave the team some important tackles to help them claw back into the contest. But Paltan defence, led by the ever so dangerous Ravinder Pahal, was up to the task as well.
What was working for the Paltan, however, was the violent form of the tall Deepak Niwas Hooda, who got a point on all his raids in the first 15 minutes. Rahul Chaudhari found it hard to crack Ravinder Pahal and that meant that the Titans were not getting as many points on their raids as they would have liked to.
The contest heated up as the clock moved closer to half time. Titans’ Sandeep Narwal got in two raid point and one tackle point within a minute and helped his team bounce back into the contest as the deficit was reduced to two points when the whistle for half time was blown. This was the beginning of Titans’ resurgence in the game
Half Time: Telugu Titans 15 – Puneri Paltan 17
The first points after the break came in form of Narwal’s tackle on Dalbeer Singh, but it was Ravinder Pahal who had something special in store as he made life for record chasing Rahul Chaudhari more difficult with a super tackle in the Titans’ next raid. The game moved at a slower pace than the first half after that as both the team made measured raids as score line almost came close.
Rahul Chaudhari, however, redeemed himself when he got a raid point against the only man on the court Pahal to take his tally to 400 points and put the Titans into the lead for the first time in the 27 minutes of the game. Sandeep Narwal increased the lead for the Titans and continued his good day.
But Narwal faced the ire of the referee and was given a yellow card in the 29th minute and the Titans were reduced to 6 men and Paltan were given a technical point. Thankfully for the Titans, the opposition couldn’t take advantage of Narwal’s absence.
Tensions reached fever pitch and another nail-biting finish looked in the offing when the timeout was taken with two teams separated by a mere two points, seven minutes away from the whistle. Just as Puneri Paltan looked adamant to hold on to the lead in the first half, the Titans showed the same obstinacy.
Chaudhari brought up his 20th super 10 of his career. Chaudhari’s time off the court helped the Paltan close the gap.
With Sandeep Narwal firing on all cylinders, the defence rose up to the occasion for Titans and quelled any hopes of a Puneri Paltan turnaround and made sure the skipper’s special day remained special.
Full Time: Telugu Titans 32 – Puneri Paltan 29
