The Match in a Tweet

Prapanjan Races off the Blocks

As we embarked on our first game of the home leg, coach Manpreet Singh shuffled his players around. K Prapanjan was brought in place of Rohit Gulia, whereas Sachin Tanwar was surprisingly excluded from the line-up. We are not sure if it was due to a minor niggle or if the coach decided to give him some rest, keeping in mind the rigours of the home leg ahead. Ajay Kumar was given the responsibility of filling in for him.

Ajay Kumar opened our scoring account with a swift touch point. With his next raid, he avoided a tackle and gave us yet another point to tie the score at 3-3. Soon, K Prapanjan joined the scoring, picking up 3 points in the next couple of raids. The absence of Sachin Tanwar didn’t hurt us as K Prapanjan was dominating the game, scoring 5 raid points in the first 15 minutes.

Despite a dominating performance from K Prapanjan, we were still in a closely fought battle against the Bengal Warriors at that point. But, our efforts continued, and we were able to inflict an all-out on them to increase our lead to 3 points, with the scoreline reading 14-11.

K Prapanjan kept the scoreboard ticking, and our defence too started to pick up their play towards the end of the first half. Ruturaj Koravi’s excellent block on Maninder Singh towards the end of the first half gave us a handy five-point lead going into the interval.

Make That Seven

K Prapanjan kept his form going and gave us the first point of the half with a slick running hand touch. The defence followed it up with some excellent teamwork, reducing the Bengal Warriors to merely two players. However, Bengal Warriors stood their ground and came back into the game with a Super Tackle.

Prapanjan showed no signs of wearing down, scoring at will. Ajay Kumar was in his groove too. Soon after, we inflicted yet another all-out on the Warriors, reiterating our command on the game. We were in the driver’s seat. We raided and plundered to keep adding to our lead, extending it to 10 with little time left for Bengal to come back.

Our defence was not far behind, as the duo of Parvesh Bhainswal and Sunil Kumar were on top of their game. Sachin Vittala produced some awe-inspiring tackles. Our defenders managed to keep their prolific raider, Maninder Singh, off the mat for more than 15-minutes throughout the encounter. Parvesh Bhainswal narrowly missed out on another High 5, scoring 4 tackles for the game.

It was a clinical and all-round performance from the team. We were dominant on both end of the mat and didn’t even give the Warriors a sniff at an opportunity. We went into the game with a six-game winning streak and came out with yet another victory. At seven, our streak is alive and kicking.