Is Vikash Kandola feeling the pressure of auction price tag?

The raider was bought for 1.7 Cr by Bengaluru Bulls.

Earlier this year during the Pro Kabaddi League PKL season 9 auctions raider Vikas Kandola became the second most expensive player in the history of the tournament when Bengaluru Bulls paid him a hefty sum of 1.7 crores to acquire his services.

Kandola had previously played for Haryana Steelers in PKL and had a decent record for them having scored 172, 190 and 174 raid points in seasons 6, 7 and 8 respectively. His average raid point per game is close to eight points.

He was never amongst the top five raiders in any of the last three seasons but was always amongst the top 10. But when the Bulls let go of Pawan Sehrawat and didn't retain him, all eyes were on Pawan during the auctions along with Pardeep Narwal. But Vikash Kandola stole some of the limelight as he became the costliest player in the auction when the Bulls bought him. It was before Tamil Thalaivas bid more than 2 crores to get Pawan on their team.

Once the Bulls got Vikash Kandola, the anticipation was that the Haryana-born player will have to play the role Pawan played for the team in the past seasons. Pawan Sehrawat has been amongst the tournament's top two raiders in the last three-four seasons which also saw the Bulls clinching their first PKL title. Kandola had big shoes to fill. Has Kandola lived up to the expectations?

How has Vikash Kandola performed this season?

In the seven games that the Bulls have played so far in PKL 9, they have won four games, drew one and lost two. Their top raider has been surprisingly Bharat who has scored 72 raid points in seven games. While Kandola is the second-best raider for the Bulls with 52 raid points in as many games. Now an average of almost 7.4 raid points per game is in no way small. In fact, it is close to his career average raid points. But it surely isn't worthy enough for the team's leading raider.

Contrast this to other sides and their leading raiders, for instance, Naveen Kumar is at the top of the raiding charts, and HS Rakesh and Arjun Deswal are leading raiders for Gujarat Giants and Jaipur Pink Panthers respectively. So it won't be wrong to say that Vikash Kandola needs to step up his game as the league progresses.

Bengaluru Bulls' defence has also done well and that's one of the reasons they are in the third spot at the points table at the moment but if they have to challenge for the title, they would need Kandola to fire all guns blazing and forget about his auction price.