Pune: UP Yoddhas, the GMR Group owned franchise representing the state of Uttar Pradesh, moved up to third on the Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) Season Nine standings, after a thumping 41-30 win over the Telegu Titans. Playing match 74 of the season at the Shree Shivchhatrapati Sports Complex in Balewadi, the UP Yoddhas put on a superb team effort with Surender Gill doing the star-turn with 13 raid points.
Before the start of match the UP Yoddhas found themselves in eighth place on the table after a win against the Haryana Steelers on Friday on the back of two tied games. The Telegu Titans while having played the same dozen games, were languishing at the bottom of the table and were desperate to arrest a nine-match losing streak.
The UP Yoddhas began with all three raiders in Pardeep Narwal, Surender Gill and Rohit Tomar on the pitch in a clear sign of intent. The Telegu Titans would look to their big raider Siddharth Desai for redemption.
Telegu Titans raided first and Siddharth Desai picked up a couple of bonus points with his first two raids. Surender Gill, as has often been the case this season, began the scoring for the UP Yoddhas with their second raid of the match. Gill also had the first two-point raid for his team.
Then at just over the seven-minute mark, Surender pulled off a sensational Super Tackle of five points and inside the first 10 minutes the UP Yoddhas had opened up a seven-point gap with the score reading 15-8.
Meanwhile Siddhart Desai was a one-man army for the Telegu Titans having notched up eight raid points in that same period. A couple of Super Tackles from them kept them in the play in the first half which ended 21-15 in the UP Yoddhas favour with Surender Gill picking up nine raid points. Ashu and Sumit in defense also had a great first-half with some gutsy blocks and tackles.
A third Super Tackle is what the Telegu Titans opened the second-half with and the lead was soon halved. Then Siddhart Desai brought up his Super 10 with a two-point raid and it was down to one.
A surprise four-point Super Raid from Mahipal then and the lead was up to four again. That was followed by a Sumit inspired Super Raid on Siddharth Desai and the six-point lead was restored with just over 11 minutes left in the match.
A time-out was called, but that would not help the Titans much as a moment of genius from Surender Gill extended the lead to eight and also brought up a well-deserved Super 10. With just over six and a half minutes left, an All Out was inflicted on the Telegu Titans as the scores read 38-24 in the UP Yoddhas favour with five minutes left in the game.
In the end, UP Yoddhas proved too good for the Telegu Titans on the day and closed out the match professionally.
