PKL 9: Bengal Warriors would enter top-six with win against Puneri Paltan

Maninder Singh has had the most fruitful Pune leg of all the raider in the league so far.

Bengal Warriors won the last encounter against Gujarat Giants comfortably and are inching closer to the playoff spot after the end of 12 matches. Both the raiding and defensive unit clicked well and scored points simultaneously with Maninder Singh scoring yet another super 10 along with Shrikanth Jadhav. Bengal Warriors will next play Puneri Paltan in their next PKL 9 game.

Puneri Paltan lost yet another close encounter against their rivals U Mumba (34-35) but still continues to hold on to the top spot. Two topmost defenders Fazel Athrachali and Sombir failed to score even a single tackle point hurting Puneri Paltan badly with none of the other defenders taking over the responsibilities.

Team News

Puneri Paltan

Raiders: Aslam Inamdar, Mohit Goyat, Pankaj Mohite, Akash Shinde, Shubham Shelke, Aditya Shinde

All-Rounders: Mohammad Nabibakhsh, Balasaheb Jadhav, Govind Gurjar

Defenders: Sanket Sawant, Fazel Atrachali, Abinesh Nadarajan, Sombir, D Mahindra Prasad, Badal Singh, Alankar Patil, Rakesh Ram

Bengal Warriors

Raiders: Maninder Singh (c), Shrikant Jadhav, Akash Pikalmunde, Suyog Gaikar, R Guhan, Parshant Kumar, Aslam Thambi,

Defenders: Girish Maruti Ernak,  Surender Nada, Amit Sheoran, Parveen Satpal, Shubham Shinde, Sakthivel R, Soleiman Pahlevani, Vaibhav Garje,

All-Rounders: Deepak Hooda, Ashish Sangwan, Vinod Kumar, Ajinkya Kapre, Rohit, Manoj Gowda, Balaji D

Head to Head

Puneri Paltan and Bengal Warriors have faced other 17 times in the Pro Kabaddi League out of which, Puneri Paltan has won eight matches whereas Bengal Warriors have come out victorious on eight occasions with one match ending in a tie. 

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Mohit Goyat scored a super 10 in the last encounter against U Mumba and was able to score a win single-handedly but lost the match only by a point. At the end of the first half, there were talks from the camp to replace Mohit with Akash but was given a chance to prove his worth which he rightly did scoring 13 points overall. 

Shaktivel was the left-corner defender from Bengal Warriors against Gujarat Giants and played a crucial role in defence. He scored a total of four tackle points with three unsuccessful tackles which need to be taken care of. The left-corner defender will be up against Aslam Inamdar who will look to attack the inexperienced youngster frequently.

Key to Success

The raiding of Bengal Warriors has been progressing well in the 2nd half of the league with all three raiders scoring points and the defence has now started to show promise. Surender Nada and Shaktivel will be up against the trio of Mohit Goyat, Aslam, and Akash Shinde. Surender Nada started the last game slowly but showed signs of form in the latter stages of the match.

With the raiders of Bengal Warriors in good form, both Fazel and Sombir need to catch up and score points. Mohammed Nabibaksh has been the weak link who hasn't been able to score both raid and tackle points. He should be substituted with either a defender or a raider to add more depth to the team. Both Aslam and Mohit can help the team in defence so replacing Nabibaksh should be a good move.

Did you know

Maninder has scored more than 64 per cent of the total raid points scored by Bengal Warriors in Pro Kabaddi season 9.

Broadcast - PKL 9

Time - 07:30 PM

Streaming - Star Sports / Disney + Hotstar