U Mumba put in an all-round performance to edge past the table toppers of Zone B, Bengaluru Bulls 32-29 in the 6th Vivo Pro Kabaddi League played at the Dome@NSCI, SVP Stadium.
Darshan started out the proceedings in style taking out the captain Rohit Kumar with a running hand touch. Rohit Rana then took on Bengaluru’s star raider Pavan Kumar with a waist hold. Soon after, their only raider on the mat, Kashiling Adake erred and went into the dugout without touching any defender giving U Mumba a 4-0 lead within the first 5 minutes of the game. It didn’t take long for U Mumba to take out the Bengaluru Bulls with an all-out, making it 9-0 with 13 minutes left in the first half. The Bulls made their first point in the 11th minute when Rohit Kumar managed to penetrate U Mumba’s defense. Darshan was clearly the star of the first half, helping U Mumba take a massive 11-point lead at 17-6 going into the second half.
Bengaluru Bulls suffered another setback when they were all out in the 4th minute of the second half, helping U Mumba extend the lead to 14 points at 23-9. Surinder continued his fine defensive run, taking out the opposing captain Rohit Kumar who was clearly caught by surprise. At that point U Mumba was leading 26-13 with 10 minutes to go. Bengaluru got an opportunity to make a comeback in the 32nd minute by inflicting an all-out on U Mumba inching closer on the scoreboard at 26-20.
Fazel and Surinder made successive tackles to ensure U Mumba stay ahead of the game. A hasty tackle by the defence gave Bengaluru’s Kashiling a super raid packing off the defense trio of Surinder, Fazel and Dharmaraj to reduce the deficit to just 4 points at 25-29 with less than 3 minutes to go. Just when Bengaluru Bulls started to look threatening, U Mumba took a raid and 2 tackle points courtesy of Surinder, extending the lead to 7 points at 32-25. Bengaluru scored a few quick points but were never able to close the deficit with the match finally ending at 32-29 winners.
When asked about the match U Mumba Coach Gholamreza Mazandarani said, “While Siddharth was left out of today’s game, it was a deliberate attempt to play more defenders to neutralize Bengaluru Bull’s strong raiders”.
Darshan scored 9 points from 20 raids while Surinder scored 5 points from 9 tackles. Fazel managed to score only 3 tackles from 6 raid points