U Mumba juggernaut in the Pro Kabaddi League kept rolling as they sealed a place in the final for the second year running beating Patna Pirates 35-18 in the semifinal at the NSCI Stadium in Worli on Friday.
The Mumbai side will face the Bengaluru Bulls, who survived a late second half surge, to edge the Telugu Titans out by one point at 39-38.
With the crowd behind U Mumba, there was no stopping the home side as they dominated right from the word go. They led 22-6 at the interval and the second half was a fine display of them running down the clock to seal victory. With captain Anup Kumar and raider Shabeer Bapu being the stars of previous victories, defender Surender Nada was the man of Friday’s win notching up 10 defensive tackles to give last year’s runners-up a shot at the title on Sunday.
The other semifinal was evenly poised at 16-10 at the break in Bengaluru’s favour. The next 15 minutes were dominated by the Bulls with Dharamaraj Cheralathan (nine points), Ajay Thakur (eight) and Chhillar (eight) proving to be a handful for the Telugu defence. With five minutes left, the Titans found themselves 14 points behind at 20-34. Surely, there was no way back for the Titans.
A time out in the 35th minute was just the break the Titans needed. Deepak Hudda started the fightback with a successive raid that was followed by some brilliant work from Rahul Chaudhari. The Titan’s raider produced four consecutive successive raids to see his side at 29-37 to narrow the gap to 37-38 with one minute to go and have the crowd standing on its feet.
With Bengaluru hopes hanging by a thread, their skipper Chhillar increased the lead to two points with a successful raid. But the Titans had another successful raid to make it 38-39 in favour of the Bulls. He did have the last point of the game, but the place in the final went to the Bulls, who survived by the skin of their teeth.
The first thing that Chhillar reached for at the post match press conference was the water bottle and not the mic. “Aisa match ek hi baar kaafi hai,” (We don’t want this to happen again) he let out a chuckle. “Josh mein hum aaj hosh kho baithe Aggressiveness saw us lose our senses). With a 14-point lead and five minutes to go, we did take things way too lightly. We didn’t feel we needed to defend the lead and that proved to be a horrible decision.
The momentum had swung their way and there was a point towards the end where we felt that we could lose. Thankfully our lead was good,” said the 29-year-old.
The Bengaluru skipper, who finished with eight points and 12 raids to his name said that they have got the wake-up-call ahead of Sunday’s final. “I wanted to face U Mumba in the final. They’ve been the team to beat. But we know that we can’t afford a repeat of a second-half like today.”
Results: Bengaluru Bulls 39 bt Telugu Titans 38, U Mumba 35 bt Patna Pirates 18
