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Pro Kabaddi action resumed on Tuesday at the Thyagaraj Sports Complex in the capital. Apart from delivering a super exciting contest for the umpteenth time this season, the Tamil Thalaivas ended up on the winning side for a change for the second time in a row thanks to Ajay Thakur's superlative performance on the last raid of the match against Gujarat Fortunegiants.
In the other match of the double-header, the home team took on the mighty Patna Pirates in their bid to get their first win in front of the home crowds. Although they put up a brave comeback after a horrendous start, it wasn't enough to earn them a win and they eventually finished two points behind Patna's score.
These were the five talking points from Day 52!
#1 Slippery Sachin impresses again
Tamil Thalaivas right corner Amit Hooda has had a great season so far with his control over this edition’s top scorer being circumspect every time he came in front of Hooda. Gujarat Fortunegiant’s Sachin, however, is a different proposition. The young man's no Narwal yet. But he's Sachin.
He is nimble and slippery and someone very difficult to predict with his clever movements when on the raid. He doesn’t have the spectacular dubki nor does he rely on getting a lot of bonus points but what he is good with, and demonstrated well on Tuesday, is his mastery at doing what he is required to do – getting raid points.
He was extremely slippery on Tuesday and made one of the best right corners of the season appear clueless with his frenetic movement across the pitch. In the first half of the game, he helped his team race past the Tamil Thalaivas by picking up nine raid points and, more importantly, he didn’t get tackled even once.
It came as a little surprising that the team didn't decide to use his services too much in the second half despite a stellar first half show by the young man. That, possibly, made the difference in a game his team lost by the narrowest of margins possible in the game.
#2 Captain cool goes hot over a denied point
Ajay Thakur is one of the calmest customers in the league and despite finishing on the losing side so many times in the last couple of months, he is still looked at with immense respect due to his leadership. But the heat of the game even got to Thakur on Tuesday when he was denied a point by the officials.
Making a raid attempt with five minutes left on the clock, Thakur claimed that he had two Gujarat men. However, having wasted their review a few minutes ago, the Thalaivas captain had no other option but to agree to official’s decision which gave him just one point. Thakur was livid and kept asking the referee to reconsider her decision, getting a green card in the process.
The offence possibly warranted a yellow card and a send-off but Thakur’s reputation probably saved him. After the green card, Thakur directed his disappointment toward Fazel Atrachali as he retreated saying, ‘Not done, Fazel.’ After Thakur ended the game with a sensational two-point raid, both the players decided to bury the hatchet with a handshake and a photograph with their best smiles on.
#3 Ajay Thakur - Kabaddi's answer to MS Dhoni
They say history doesn’t repeat itself. But some men like to prove everything that ‘they’ say wrong. And one of the stars of Pro Kabaddi League Tamil Thalaivas captain Ajay Thakur belongs to that league of men.
After managing a win on the last raid against the Warriors in the Thalaivas' last game, Thakur had the last laugh again on Tuesday as he pulled off what he had achieved just two days ago. Just like in the game against Bengal Warriors, it all came down to Ajay Thakur’s last raid. A single point would have given his team a draw and a couple would have meant that Thakur’s team would have pulled off the most spectacular of comebacks. Having done that on a number of occasions for his team this season, Thakur was determined about not going back empty handed and made full use of the 30 seconds he had.
And as it so often happens, fortune did favour the brave again on Tuesday night as Fortunegiants' Rohit Gulia needlessly threw himself in the tackle attempt and gave Thakur the two points he needed to seal his team’s second such win in their second consecutive game.
The Tuesday attempt would definitely rank a notch higher than the effort against Bengal for Thalaivas were far behind in the match against their opponents on Tuesday than they were on Monday.
#4 Delhi's first-minute horror show
Murphy’s law says anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Having faced the most number of defeats in Group A in Season 5, the Delhi franchise had many such encounters with Murphy’s law. But on Tuesday, it chased the battered and bruised team from the first minute of the game itself. Patna came out all guns firing when Pardeep Narwal claimed four points with his first raid of the game, which incidentally was also the first raid attempt by Patna.
If being left with just half of the personnel within the first minute of the contest wasn’t bad enough, Dabang Delhi also went for the review and got it wrong which meant they were on the referee's mercy for the rest of the 39 minutes of the game.
The hoodoo didn’t leave the home team anytime soon and before getting their first points on the board, Delhi saw 11 points being scored against them. Although, they did manage to mount a commendable comeback and ended the first half with just a five-point trail, Patna did inflict one of the most destructive first blows of Season 5.
#5 Defence lifts Delhi from shambles
Despite losing their game against Patna Pirates and failing to break their duck in front of home crowds, Delhi provided a spirited show for their fans to savour. After being down 11-0, Delhi did brilliantly well to come back into the match and even lead Patna at one point of the game.
What must have been encouraging for the team was the coming good of its defence. A team that had an average of just seven tackle points before this game upped its game against Patna Pirates on Tuesday night and kept delivering one super tackle after another to crawl their way back in the game after one of the most forgettable starts to the proceedings.
Delhi, whose defence had been labelled the worst in the tournament, would take a lot of pride in ending the game with 12 tackle points, one more than Patna Pirates.
