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The penultimate day of the Telugu Titans home leg witnessed the home team failing to live up to expectations as the visiting Bengaluru Bulls team romped home to a comfortable 37-24 at the Rajiv Gandhi Indoor Stadium in Vishakapatnam.
Similar to their surge in the previous outing against the UP Yoddha, the Titans started strong and raced away to a 9-5 lead before the Bulls pulled things back to go into the break with just a two-point deficit.
The home team failed to latch on to the slender lead as they succumbed to an all-out early in the second half with gave the Bulls an important 17-14 lead in the game. The Bulls then cruised to a six-point lead before the hosts came within touching distance of levelling the scores with some brilliance from Nilesh Salunke but failed to cut through the Bulls' defence unit.
With Bengaluru leading 24-20 and five minutes to go on the clock, Nilesh Salunke yet again fished out two points after which the Bulls' defence took matters into its own hands as three tackles on the trot knocked the winds out of the Telugu Titans' sail.
With just two minutes to go on the clock, the lone man on the mat Kamal Singh was tackled as the Bulls galloped away to a 10-point lead which only added more salt to the wounds of the Titans' unit, which fell to its third home loss by a massive 24-37 margin.
Pawan Sehrawat top-scored for the Bulls with 13 points while Mahender Singh also finished with a High-5. For the Titans, Nilesh Salunke, who came off the benches in this game claimed the top honours with six raid points to his credit.
Bengaluru Bulls' assistant coach BC Ramesh was a happy man at the end of the game as he stressed on the strategy in the game that saw the downfall of the hosts.
"Our defence was strong in the beginning," he said, as he added "We had planned to take the game slow and then pick up the pace as the game went on. This strategy was kept in mind particularly to put the pressure on them since they were coming into this match which four games on the trot."
However, all was not rosy with the Bengaluru Bulls as skipper Rohit Kumar was forced to return empty-handed on a vast majority of his raids in the first half. On being questioned if the pressure of the home crowd was playing on his mind, Rohit was quick to answer.
"Crowd was on my side through the game. I tried to get points but I was not flustered since I knew either Pawan or Harish would bring about the points. My aim was to ensure that I do not get out, which I succeeded to go to a certain limit."
Adding more detail to his strategy in the whole game, Bulls' skipper Rohit claimed that patience was the order of the day and he was clear on his role in the entire game.
"The pressure was on them to score points in a heap and my plan while raiding was to kill time as much as possible. I knew that they would try and catch me during my raid but slowly even they got tired which played to our advantage."
On a day when the Telugu Titans raiders failed to find their bearings, the Bulls' defenders were on top of their game but that was only a result of a lot more license to kill in the second half, as described by Rohit Kumar.
"At the start, the idea was to ensure that we do not give away too many free points to the Telugu Titans' raiders since that was a major source of our errors in the previous losses. In the second half though, we played with a lot more freedom and the defenders grew with confidence as they made one tackle after the other."
Such was the dominance of the Bengaluru Bulls' raiders that the Telugu Titans raiders were forced to collect a majority of their points through the bonus, with nine out of the total sixteen raid points coming through the bonus. Coach BC Ramesh did mention that it was all a ploy to keep the raiders from collecting points in a heap.
"The raiders in the Telugu Titans were sure to pick up bonus points. The idea was to ensure that we do not give away too many points through advance tackles. Rohit Kumar essayed his role as a captain to perfection, and that is the main reason why we won today."
