Bengaluru : Patna Pirates scored their second consecutive victory by beating Bengaluru Bulls 33-24 in season three of the Pro Kabaddi League here on Wednesday. It was a sheer team work at display with all their players coming into the act, bagging points at will. The star of the day was Rohit Kumar, who with his successful raids garnered eight points. This was fourth defeat of Bengaluru Bulls in their own backyard. Rohit was ably supported by Manpreet Singh and Sabdeep Narwal, who bagged four and five points. At the halfway stage the winners had a 20-10 advantage after they gave one point lead 7-8 in 13th minute.
In the overall context, the visitors completely dominated the proceeding, with Manpreet, a former Asian Games gold medalist, inspiring his team after he failed to make any impact in the last match against Jaipur Pinks. Sunil Kumar (2), D Suresh (3), Vinod Kumar and Pardeep Narwal displayed good kabaddi to help their team win.
The winners were aggressive from the word go. The young Bengaluru team on the other hand could not match the experienced opponents, who did not fail to seize any opportunity to get points, which eventually resulted in the home side trailing by ten points in the first half. Bengaluru was okay with the raids, pocketing 17 points compared to 18 by the visitors, but the defence let them down with bagging just five points, whereas Patna scored 11 points.
Moreover, Bengaluru could not get the opponents all out as Patna, who did it twice which strengthened their prospects of winning the match. Captain Surjeet Singh was a big disappointment for the home side. However, Amit Rathi was the star performer who scored ten points with nine raid and one tackle point.
His efforts, along side with Shrikanth Tewthia (4) and Deepak Kumar could not save the night for Bengaluru, who lost their first match of the new season after they had beaten start-studded Delhi Dabang at Visakhapatnam.
In the second match, Puneri Paltans came back strongly t beat Delhi Dabang 38-20. Paltans dominated the initial proceedings, ending their first half 16-9 with seven points lead. Their aggressive game saw them winning the match rather convincingly. Captain Chillar and Ajay Thakur, who played for Bengaluru Bulls last season, knew the conditions very well and used it to their advantage, with the supporting fans egging them to snatch points from Paltans.
