On a very important match to stay alive in the competition, between the 4th and 5th ranked teams in Zone B charts of Pro-Kabbadi league, Telugu Titans (TT) overcame Tamil Thalaivas (TTh) in the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium (Chennai) at the latter’s home turf where they are yet to secure a win in the league.
Despite an aggressive play in the 2nd half, and, a very astute captain in Ajay Thakur whom I think will go on to be the man of the tournament this year, the home team falls short with a scoreline 37-58 which does not reveal how well their second half was compared to the first. Words fall short for the home team skipper Ajay Thakur, the way he raided commanded respect and even a couple of acknowledgements from the opposite camp especially from Vishal (TT) while losing a point defending Ajay on one of his successful 20 raids out of 23 with an impressive strike rate of 87%.There is a genuine feeling among the very knowledgeable and sporting Chennai crowd, that the way Ajay carries himself on the field and the cool demeanor reminds a lot of MS Dhoni, Chennai’s favorite adopted son of the soil for his prowess in leading CSK for years. It’s compelling to say now, but it all seems likely, Ajay is on the way to become the next big thing in Chennai in the years to come.
On the other hand, Telugu Titans were so aggressive from the start that resulted in a very dominant first half in their favor with a scoreline 15-30. Taking nothing away from the Titans, Thalaivas messed it up big time in the 1st half giving into their emotions especially on the defense without proper strategy which resulted in them being all out twice in their lethargic first half. Rahul Chaudhari (TT), won ruthless points amidst a small hiccup in his hamstring while twisting to reach the white line, took an unassuming 9 points along with Nilesh Salunke (TT) taking away 6 points in their raids in total. You have to applaud the defense of Titans, which is impeccable in the hands of Mohsen, Farhad and Vishal mainly they stood like a fortress which is immovable except for the hands and legs of Ajay Thakur and Prapanjan (TTh) from Thalaivas.
All in all, Titans move up the ladder and looking like the team to beat getting into the final leg of the competition with an impeccable defense and smart raiders like Nilesh and Rahul, will be a hard team to beat. What next for Thalaivas? Hmmm, Ajay being the lonely warrior, Prapanjan to an extent, and a very swift Dong Lee who stole a handful of points during his raids, Thalaivas defense looks bleak. They need to have strong defenders to challenge the other team. During the final break, the coach was firing all cylinders to Thalaivas in the local language Tamil and English to the non-Tamil speakers in the time, amidst a huge deficit in the scoreline with just 3 minutes for the final whistle.
The aggressive mindset of Thalaivas in the 2nd half, if and only if, would have been present in the 1st half, they would have been on the other side of the fence yesterday. Wish they learned their lesson in a hard way but a very sporting and aggressive second half pleased everyone who was vociferously supporting them despite their lack of intent in the first half. Ajay the skipper, can he turn the fortunes around?
