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Just when perpetual slow starters Tamil Thalaivas were beginning to impose themselves in the second half of the Pro Kabaddi League Zone B contest between them and hosts Bengal Warriors at the Netaji Indoor Stadium in Kolkata on Sunday, the most memorable moment of the match arrived. Bengal’s raider Maninder Singh brought delight to his team and the on looking hordes of fans by inflicting a super raid to send their score escalating from 23-22 to 26-22. It was a blow from which the Chennai franchise could never recover from and the Warriors completed a 29-25 win to stay unbeaten at home.
The Warriors skipper Surjeet Singh later attributed those three points that the Jalandhar boy fetched as the turning point of the match.
“Maninder Singh’s super raid was definitely the turning point of the match. We were leading by just a solitary point before it but Maninder ensured that the gap increased to four points between the two teams. It helped us to win the match at the end of the day.”
With 56 raid points in the kitty, Maninder has now broken into the top 10 of the Raiders Leaderboard this season. The affable 27-year-old has been the top raider in each of the three matches that Bengal has played at home so far with his highest being a dazzling 13 against the defending champions Patna Pirates.
Maninder is proving himself to be indispensable for the Men in Blue and naturally the expectations are rising with every outing.
Does that create any added pressure?
A smiling Maninder simply said he is too happy to keep on performing for his team.
Skipper Surjeet elaborated that the advice to the raiders is to play freely without worrying about getting caught.
Maninder might have taken away all the headache from Surjeet but the Bengal team certainly did have a cause of concern with their star raider Jang Kun Lee suffering a shoulder injury which forced him to retreat to the sidelines.
Surjeet revealed that the Korean is perfectly alright now and also added that their other dependable raider, Deepak Narwal too has recovered and is fit to play Bengal’s next match on Tuesday against the Haryana Steelers.
The Tamil Thalaivas coach K Baskaran too admitted during his media interaction that the match was snatched away from their hands by Maninder’s super raid, although he added that losing their raider K Prapanjan put them at a major disadvantage.
Prapanjan got a nasty bruise over his eyebrow that required medical attention.
“Prapanjan’s injury did put us at a disadvantage. But we still made it very close only to lose it in the last few minutes.
"The instructions have always been to avoid contact in the dying minutes but they gave way and the tempo was lost after that,” he rued.
