PKL 9: Resurgent Tamil Thalaivas will play Maninder Singh's Bengal Warriors

A win against Girish Ernak's side will help the team missing Pawan Sehrawat climb to the sixth position on the league table.

Tamil Thalaivas in the last encounter beat Dabang Delhi KC by a ten-point margin (49-39) winning their second consecutive match. The team after the appointment of Ashan Kumar has looked completely different in terms of aggression. If the southern team wins against Bengal Warriors then they might jump into the top 8 and are currently placed 11th in the points table. Tamil Thalaivas will play Bengal Warriors in their next PKL 9 game.

Bengal Warriors have not started the Pune leg on a good note losing to U Mumba in the last encounter. Maninder Singh has looked off-colour in the last couple of matches and on the whole, has not performed at his best compared to his previous season. A win here will help Bengal jump into the playoff position.

Team News

Tamil Thalaivas

Raiders: Pawan Sehrawat, Ajinkya Ashok Pawar, Himanshu, Jatin, Himanshu

All-rounders: Thanushan Laxmamohan, Visvanath V, K Abhimanyu

Defenders: Sagar, Sahil, M Abishek, Mohit, Himanshu, Ashish, Md Arif Rabbani, Arpit Saroha, Ankit

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

Tamil Thalaivas and Bengal Warriors have faced each other in ten matches at the Pro Kabaddi League out of which, Bengal have won nine matches whereas Tamil Thalaivas have come out victorious on only one occasion.

Player to watch

Narender Kandola in the absence of Pawan Sehrawat has turned out to be a star raider for Tamil Thalaivas. The youngster scored 24 points in the last game against Dabang Delhi KC which is almost half of the team’s total. The left raider is good at taking bonuses which is a huge positive.

Maninder Singh needs to get back to his original form for Bengal to qualify for the playoffs. The 32-year-old will face a stiff challenge against Sahil Gulai from the left and Abhishek from the region. Abhishek can single-handedly throw out the raiders but has a higher percentage of unsuccessful tackles which Maninder has to take advantage of.

Key to Success

The trio of Deepak Niwas Hooda, Shrikant Jadhav and Maninder Singh have a lot of experience playing in the Pro Kabaddi League for many franchises. The combo of Girish Ernak and Vaibhav Garje has been the backbone in defence and if they can silence Narendra Kandola then Tamil Thalaivas might find it difficult to score with other raiders.

Ajinkya Pawar and Himanshu Singh need to take up additional responsibility and help Narendra Kandola in scoring raid points. Himanshu has been good in defence but needs to reduce the unsuccessful tackle rate along with scoring raid points swiftly.

Did you know

Tamil Thalaivas last beat Bengal Warriors in season 5 on September 24, 2017 (33-32) and since then have lost all the encounters.

Broadcast - PKL 9

Time - 08:30 PM

Streaming - Star Sports / Disney + Hotstar