Defending champions Patna Pirates off to a flying start, hand Puneri Paltan their first loss

THE DEFENDING CHAMPIONS Patna Pirates opened their Pro Kabaddi 4 campaign with a convincing 24-30 win against home team Puneri Paltan; the latter's first defeat of the season after 2 back to back wins.

Things began on a rather even keel, with Pardeep Narwal and Surjeet Singh ran successful raids for Patna, with Nitin Tomar and Deepak Niwas Hooda doing the same for Pune. Nitin got caught, and so did Pardeep. After 7 minutes, a cautious contest had a scoreline of 3-3.

The defending champions took a couple of swings, trapping Ajay Thakur and and some touches from Surjeet Singh. Pune anaged to trap Pardeep again, Deepak managed to escape a tackle. 13 minutes in, the scoreline was neck to neck still, with home team Puneri Paltan trailing 6-7.

Patna managed to catch Sonu Narwal while Rajesh Mondal, Pardeep Narwal and Surjeet Singh did well to get touches. And then Pune's Deepak got majorly owned by the Pirates' defence when he turned his back for a split second. Pune tried to fight back with Pardeep and Nitin Tomar running successful raids but they could not avoid the Pirates taking a 9-13 lead, with Pune standing on the edge of an all-out.

Nitin, the only Paltan on the mat, came raiding and got the bonus. But on his quest for a touch he ended up getting in too deep and being trapped. Puneri Paltan were all-out, and Patna got their first decisive lead on the verge of half-time: 10-16.

The Paltan returned in the second half with a plan. They caught Pardeep Narwal twice and Kuldeep Singh once while Manjeet Chillar, Nitin andSonu Narwal ran successful raids fo them. They managed to get Patna's lead down to 1 point (16-17) and the defending champions were now facing a potential all-out.

But Bajirao Hogade did not allow that to happen. Just when his team needed the most, he managed to surprise Nitin Tomar with a perplexing charge. The super tackle brought Surjeet Singh back onto the mat, who went right ahead and ran a super raid on Pune. Suddenly the score was 16-22 with Patna Pirates firmly back in the driving seat with 12 minutes remaining.

From here on the defending champions took to playing a safer game. Their raiders ate up their 30 seconds and never ventured too deep, and their defenders decided to stand back and let the opponent raiders risk it. The idea was to avoid any multi-point setback and it worked. Mostly single touch successful raids from both teams took the game to a static 20-26 with 3 minutes to spare.

But by now, Pune were on the verge of a second all-out. To mitigate what would be a full-stop to their chances, they replaced Ravinder Pahal with Ajay Thakur. But Ajay's raid was unsuccessful and the inevitable happened. Pune went 21-29 down with 2 minutes left. The game was over.

The home team still tried one last hand, though. Deepak ran two successful raids. But at this point the Pune defence was happy to hand out single points because the lead was secure enough. The game ended 24-30, with the defending champions Patna Pirates registering their sixth win against the hosts, getting their title defence off to a competent start, and handing Puneri Paltan their first defeat of the season after two nights of rather impressive and victorious displays. 

This was Pune's third night in a row on the mat, and it's tough to tell how much of a role fatigue played in the result. But it was obvious that the coach was forced to rotate the team a lot, and the hero of Maharashtra Derby Ajay Thakur wasn't at his agile best. The team can hope for a respite soon but only after they play Dabang Delhi tomorrow night, the last game on their home leg. The coach will have a job in his hand to figure out a way to bounce back from this loss quick, without putting too much on his players and risking burnout or injury.