PKL 9: Maninder Singh vs Siddharth Desai in Bengal Warriors' meeting against Telugu Titans

Both teams enter this clash on the back of a defeat.

Telugu Titans will have something to rejoice about in Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) season 9 as they will be playing in front of their home fans after a gap of two years. Nothing has gone right for the Southern franchise, who are stuck on nine points in the 14 matches played so far and are out of the playoffs contention race.

Bengal Warriors, on the other hand, are fighting for the playoffs spot and a win against Telugu Titans will make them move upwards in the points table into the playoffs spot. Maninder Singh has been one of the star raiders for Bengal Warriors scoring more than 60 per cent of the overall raid points the franchise has scored. 

Team News

Telugu Titans

Raiders: Abhishek Singh, Monu Goyat, Siddharth Sirish Desai, Rajnish, Ankit Beniwal, Vinay, Aman Kadian.

Defenders: Surjeet Singh, Parvesh Bhainswal, Vishal Bhardwaj, Adarsh T, Ravinder Pahal, Vijay Kumar, Nitin, Mohit, Mohit Pahal. Muhammed Shihas S.

All-Rounders: Mohsen Maghsoudlou Jafari, K Hanumanthu, Hamid Mirzaei Nader, Ravinder

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

Telugu Titans and Bengal Warriors have faced 19 other times in the Pro Kabaddi League (PKL). The Titans have won three matches. In contrast, Bengal Warriors have come out victorious on eight occasions with five games ending in a tie. 

Player to watch

Shrikanth Jadhav will be the player to watch out for Bengal Warriors. He has been performing reasonably well both in the raid and defence sections. Although he hasn't scored many Super 10s, but has been supporting Maninder Singh as the secondary raider in the past few matches along with helping the defence in tackles.

Telugu Titans' Siddharth Desai is the lone warrior along with a few spots in the defence from Parvesh Bainswal and Vishal Bharadwaj. Siddharth Desai will be up against Maninder Singh and there will be a race as to who will score more raid points in the match. In the last match, Desai scored 18 points and will look to execute the same against Bengal Warriors.

Key to Success

The Bengal Warriors' defence is not as good as they were at the start of the season. Girish Ernak was the top defender during the first leg of the season but has lost form considerably since then. The defence of Bengal Warriors needs to stop Siddharth Desai and if they do so they will have a great chance of winning the encounter comfortably.

Telugu Titans on a whole have not performed well with both the raiding and defensive sections performing below par. It is now time for Telugu Titans to replace the current players with the ones from the bench so that they get enough game time going ahead to the next season. This can also be beneficial for Telugu Titans as Bengal Warriors will not strategise against these unknown players.

Did you know?

Bengal Warriors are unbeaten against Telugu Titans since season 5. The last time Telugu Titans beat Bengal Warriors was way back in 2016 ( PKL season 4).

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