Pro Kabaddi League 2018 | Match 53: UP Yoddha vs Bengaluru Bulls Review | 08 November, 2018

Still, in search of their maiden win, UP Yoddha went into this match against Bengaluru Bulls on the back of 2 consecutive ties. UP raiders Rishank Devadiga and Shrikant Jadhav were looking to step up and cause havoc against the Bengaluru Bulls defence. The Bulls, on the other hand, had star raiders Rohit Kumar and ret hot Pawan Sehrawat in their ranks. They looked to continue their good vein of form by notching up another win.

Playing 7:

UP Yoddha – Rishank Devadiga, Sachin Kumar, Shrikant Jadhav, Nitesh Kumar, Narender, Jeeva Kumar, Prashant Kumar Rai.

Bengaluru Bulls – Pawan Sehrawat, Rohit Kumar, Mahender Singh, Raju Lal Choudhary, Kashiling Adake, Ashish Sangwan, Sandeep.

Substitutes:

Azad Singh, Amit, and Bhanu Pratap Singh from UP Yoddha.

Toss:

UP Yoddha won the toss and chose the court.

Rishank Devadiga in action. [Picture Courtesy: ProKabaddi.com]

Shrikant Jadhav got the home team going in his very first raid of the match. Pawan Sehrawat responded with a point of his own. Nine minutes into the game, Pawan Sehrawat inflicted the first all-out of the match on UP Yoddha. Ten minutes into the game, with both sides trading blows, the score was 6-8 in favour of the Bulls. The Bengaluru Bulls defence looked on song and was successfully tackling Rishank, Prashant Kumar Rai and Shrikant Jadhav on regular basis.

At halftime, UP Yoddha was trailing the Bulls by 9 points.

Three minutes into the game after halftime, Mahender got a green card from the umpire. With 10 minutes remaining, Mahender Singh tackled and got a High-5 as well.

Pawan Sehrawat got tackled in a do-or-die raid by Nitesh and the Bulls responded by tackling Shrikant Jadhav, the do-or-die raid specialist from UP Yoddha, maintaining their 10-point difference.

With two minutes remaining, Jeeva gave away another point to Pawan and got the score difference to 8. The Bengaluru side got rather intense in the last 40 seconds as they looked to inflict another all-out on the home team. 40 seconds before the end of the match, UP Yoddha got all-out and as if to rub salt in the wound, Pawan completed his Super 10 with 18 seconds remaining.

In the last few seconds, UP Yoddha showed some courage and executed 2 successful raids as well as tackled a Bengaluru Bulls raider to add some respectability to the scoreline. They should’ve done this way before to win at-least-one match in their home leg. The match ended 37-27, in favour of the Bulls. Pawan from the Bengaluru Bulls got the Best Raider of the Match

Pawan Sehrawat in action. [Picture Courtesy: ProKabaddi.com]

What a convincing performance it was by Bengaluru Bulls. They never gave even a sniff to the UP Yoddha during the entire match. Pawan Sehrawat notched up another Super 10 and was ably supported by Rohit Kumar. Young defender Mahender Singh starred with a High-5. With this win, Bengaluru Bulls go top of the table with 31 points having played just 7 games.

This ends a disappointing home leg for the UP-based team as they failed to score even a single win on their home turf at Shaheed Vijay Singh Pathik Sports Complex, Greater Noida. Rishank Devadiga though appearing to be injured tried his best to keep UP in the hunt.

Nitesh Kumar completed a High-5 and proved his mettle yet again as the leading defender this season. End of the home leg will give UP Yoddha time to go back to the planning board and re-group in order to get their season back on track.