The Match in a Tweet

Starting Strong.

In a Do-or-Die match for our Giants, we made one change to the line. All-rounder Hadi Oshtorak came in place of Rohit Gulia. Our Giants looked ready to take on the UP Yoddha by storm. Sachin Tanwar escaped a tackle attempt on him to gain our first point of the game. He added 2 more points with a running hand touch on Jeeva Kumar after getting the bonus. Our raiders were playing smart and patient by getting bonus points and not making haste to get touch points. On the other hand, our defence was also being patient and not going for any advance tackles. Within the first five minutes the score was still tied.

Sachin was his usual self as he was able to get the top defender of VIVO PKL 6, Nitesh Kumar out in back to back raids. Soon after, Prapanjan got into the action picking up his first raid points as he escaped a tackle on him to reach for the center line adding 2 points to our total. After playing on the offence our star raider got on the defence when he got a double ankle hold on Prashant Kumar Rai. After some excellent piece of defending from Nitesh Kumar UP took back the lead. Rohit Gulia was trusted for the Do-or-Die raid and he came back with excellent two points and got us our lead back. Our defence and offence were clicking and complimenting each other, when offence got a point for us our defence complimented it with making a tackle and in the dying moments of the first half were able to get first All-Out on UP to extend our lead to 5 points.

Finishing Strong

Second half stared slow with a couple of empty raids to give us a Do-or-Die, which was trusted to execute by K. Prapanjan. He did well by giving us the point, which was followed by an excellent tackle by Sunil Kumar. We kept adding to our lead as Sachin Tanwar was back into the game getting touch points on each raid. We played excellent on the Do-or-Die raids, getting points in each of them.

Our Giants were firing on all cylinders as we inflicted another all-out on UP to extend our lead by 10 points. We were now in the driving seat steering the outcome of the game in our favour taking a comfortable lead of 15 points putting our foot halfway through the door to the finals with just 9 minutes to play in the game. We were not letting up as our defence picked up the game after the comfortable lead. Sunil Kumar bounced back excellently after not being able to register any tackle point in the pervious match. Late in the game UP Yoddha made a comeback into the game by inflicting an All-Out on us and cutting our lead to 7 points.

UP Yoddha were cutting down on our lead bit by bit as they were getting points making it a close game. But our Giants kept their nerves and punched their way into the finals for the second time in two years.