Pro Kabaddi League 2017 Season 5 : Anup Kumar slams U Mumba's poor performance against Pune

Season 2 champions, U Mumba suffered a heavy loss at the hands of a supremely efficient Puneri Paltan. Even though this was only Pune’s second win against Mumbai in nine attempts, the 33-21 victory on Friday, stood out in every aspect. Post the heavy loss, a dejected Anup Kumar attempted to put things into perspective.

“The entire team must sit together and talk now. There wasn’t a single player who played well tonight, not even average,” he said.

In what was a largely one-sided affair, Pune dominated proceedings from the get go, rarely letting Mumbai breathe. The Paltan’s produced a stupendous all-round performance as Mumbai we left to lick their wounds.

“We were trailing from the very beginning, that moment when Deepak Hooda took 3 points was the turning point of the match. If we would have tackled him, maybe we would have had a chance,” stated Anup.

Asked specifically about what led to his team’s downfall, Kumar suggested that his players were extremely impatient with their tackles. As a result, they gave away a number of cheap points through the course of the match.

“We were a bit too aggressive and tried the advance tackles. In the future, we need to be in control and not play so aggressively. When you play the first match, there’s no pressure that’s why we were a bit aggressive.”

But captain cool was also quick in praising the quality of the opposition. While U Mumba’s mistakes did largely help Pune, Deepak Hooda and co. were supremely confident and played the game with only one thing on their minds – dominate.

“Pune had a nice balance in defence and offence. Our start hasn’t been good, this was the first match so we’ll have to be careful from now on. When you win the first match, the confidence of the entire team rises. The way Pune played was great.”

Realising that a bad start can cause havoc in the dressing room, Anup accepted that his side will head into the next match (Haryana Steelers) under a lot of pressure and expectations. Nonetheless, he suggested that this is only the beginning.

“We will play the next match with some pressure on us but we will try to perform. Our team is good too but the difference is we couldn’t perform. We just played a normal match, we didn’t produce anything great. If you lose to a good team or a bad team in the first match, you always learn something,” Anup signed off.