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The last night in Delhi gave us an offensive exhibition with Rahul Chaudhari and Kashiling Adake, two of the all-time leading raiders in the history of the competition, scoring big to lead their sides to commanding wins.
Dabang Delhi became the first side to finish their home leg winless as they went down to the Titans. 22-points was the margin of victory as the Telugu Titans crushed them 44-22. Earlier, U Mumba beat the Bengaluru Bulls 42-30, the night being marked by high-scoring encounters.
Here are the main talking points from our final night in Delhi.
#1 Bulls lose patience with Ajay Kumar
The hope was that this season would be different for the Bengaluru Bulls and Rohit Kumar. After having been overly burdened with raiding duties last season, it was assumed that the load would be significantly lighter this time around thanks to the presence of Ajay Kumar, a man who was central to the Jaipur Pink Panthers' run to the final in Season 4.
Yet, after a promising start, Rohit has once again found himself on his own with regards to notching up raid points with Ajay's form anything but inspiring. Coach Randhir Singh opted to drop Ajay for tonight's game against U Mumba, keeping the young Harish Naik instead after he picked up a Super 10 in the last game.
Sunil Jaipal, an all-rounder, was brought in in place of Ajay to shore up the defence. Even during a last-man-standing situation during this match, the Bulls opted to go with Gurvinder Singh over Ajay, making him pretty much the fourth-choice raider at the moment for the Bulls.
What a fall from grace it has been for him. He has scored just 62 points thus far from 17 games, a very poor return indeed. It is already a tough ask for the Bulls to make the playoffs; one wonders if Ajay is going to be a major part of the finish to the season for them.
#2 Mumba continue to go with their 4-raider unit
Anup Kumar, Kashiling Adake, Shrikant Jadhav and Shabeer Bapu all took to the mat once again for U Mumba as they stuck with their approach of playing four raiders in the starting seven, an approach they had tried in their last encounter.
Anup was manning the left corner position once more. Kashi being in hot form, played the role of lead raider with the plan likely being that Shrikant would serve as his deputy. Shabeer and Anup would be the senior heads that would take raids when they needed to arrest their opponent's momentum or bring a level of calm to the game.
And that's exactly how things went down. The only thing that did not go to plan was that young Shrikant looked completely off his game tonight and the Mumba coaching setup decided to put Joginder Narwal in, back from injury, to man the left corner, allowing Anup some relief. They finished the night with that setup.
With Surinder Singh, a major liability in games past, having a solid night with six tackle points from nine attempts, Mumba managed to leverage their raiding strength to get the better of the Bulls.
#3 It took the Dabangs 8 minutes today
Six minutes against the Haryana Steelers. Three minutes against the Patna Pirates. 14 minutes yesterday against the Yoddha. Eight minutes today versus the Titans.
Those are the times it's taken for Dabang Delhi's opponents to inflict an All Out on the hosts in their last four games. Talk about getting off to the worst possible start and the Dabangs have seemingly perfected that art this week.
Mindless tackles, silly advances, aimless raiding - Delhi have displayed a staggering level of ineptitude as far as starting a game is concerned. With the weakest defence in the league, they just keep making it tougher for them to register wins. Even on the last night in Delhi, this was one trend that refused to change. It is no surprise really that the Dabangs are on a sorry seven-game losing run.
#4 Too little too late?
Rahul Chaudhari has scored 32 points in his last two games - 15 tonight against the hapless Dabang Delhi defence and 17 yesterday against the Jaipur Pink Panthers. It has been a while since the overall leader in points has seen such impressive back-to-back outings. It did come against two very weak defences - Delhi have been miserable throughout the tournament while Jaipur were below their best and far too error-prone yesterday.
The achievement still should not be diminished for beyond the points, it was the manner in which Rahul went about his raiding that stood out the most. No tentativeness, no confusion. The fact that the captaincy has been given to Rohit Rana has no doubt helped, with Rahul left to purely concentrate on raiding. It has also seen Nilesh Salunkhe and Mohsen Maghsodlou being used better and more often, all contributing to a better yield for Rahul.
They are still in with a mathematical chance of making the playoffs, but their fate is out of their hands as they need the other sides to slip up. Though impressive, one wonders if this charge has come a little too late for the Titans.
#5 He's just on a roll is Kashi
When U Mumba inflicted the first All Out of the game in the 11th minute, it meant an 11-6 lead over the Bulls. Kashiling Adake had scored 10 of those 11 points for Mumba! A Super 10 in the 11th minute of the match! Sensational stuff courtesy the man from Sangli who has found his groove in the last couple of weeks.
After having been missing in action over the last two seasons and the early part of this season, he has been right in the thick of things almost every night and a key reason why Mumba are on this fantastic run of form. He finished with 17 points from 16 raids tonight, 14 of those points coming in the first half itself.
You can just see it in his outlook - he seems to be enjoying the game once more, the fact that he doesn't have to take up all of the raiding responsibility seems to have certainly helped. He is also the latest of the Anup Kumar reclamation projects. Anup's influence seems to just bring out the best in the star men - Rakesh Kumar failed the first two seasons in Pro Kabaddi, but flourished under Anup at U Mumba. Ajay Thakur was revived at the World Cup last year for Team India under Anup's captaincy and now Kashi.
The Bulls couldn't lay a finger on him in the entire first period as he torched their defence every single time he came into raid. Kashi is second all-time in raid points in PKL history and crossed the 500-point landmark tonight against the Bulls. He also crossed a century of points for this season and now has 108 points in his kitty for Season 5.
