PKL 9: UP Yoddhas hope to continue unbeaten run against Telugu Titans

Surender Gill is one of the most in-form players in the league and one to watch out for in the game.

UP Yoddhas notched up a good victory in the last encounter against Haryana Steelers (40-34). Surinder Gill scored yet another super 10 after returning from an injury and the team overall put up a great fight. Ashu along with Sumit and Nitesh Kumar made equal contributions to the victory against Haryana. Bottom-placed Telugu Titans will play UP Yoddhas in the next PKL 9 game.

Telugu Titans lost the last encounter to Dabang Delhi KC (34-40) in a closely fought contest. Vishal Bharadwaj scored eight tackle points and was his first high 5 in PKL season 9. Siddharth Desai has started to show consistency scoring his third successive super 10.

Team News

UP Yoddhas

Raiders: Pardeep Narwal, Surender Gill, Nitin Tomar, Anil Kumar, Mahipal, Rohit Tomar, Aman, Durgesh Kumar, Rathan K, Gulveer Singh

All-Rounders: Gurdeep, Nehal Desai, Nitin Panwar, Sandeep Narwal

Defenders: Nitesh Kumar, Sumit, Ashu Singh, Shubham Kumar, Abozar Mohajermighani, Babu M, Jaideep

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

Head to Head

Bengal Warriors and Dabang Delhi K.C. have faced each other 11 times in the Pro Kabaddi League out of which, Telugu Titans have won two matches whereas UP Yoddhas has come out victorious on seven occasions with two matches ending in a tie.

Player to watch

Abhishek Singh after coming back from injury hasn't shown signs of intent while raiding. He was the top raider for U Mumba in the past few seasons but is not able to replicate the same after his return from injury. With Siddharth returning to form it is time for Abhishek to support him as the secondary raider and help revive him whenever required. The problem is Siddhart alone cannot score all the raid points which makes Abhishek Singh’s responsibility even stronger.

Surinder Gill after returning to the playing 7 scored another super 10 and this time he will be up against Vishal Bharadwaj. Vishal has been highly inconsistent in PKL season 9 and Gill shall make use of this opportunity and attack him frequently. Under pressure, Vishal makes too many mistakes that can go in Gill’s favour.

Key to Success

The performance of the defence will determine the game for Telugu Titans. Parvesh Bainswal and Vishal Bharadwaj have each scored eight tackle points separately in season 9 but apart from that performance they haven't scored enough points and the unsuccessful rate also remains high. They will be up against the Pardeep and Gill combo who can decimate the defence of any franchise.

The corner duo of Sumit and Nitesh should look to stop Siddharth Desai and if they succeed to do so then the raiding department will strive under pressure and none of the raiders apart from Siddhart in the recent encounters have scored super 10s. 

Did you know

Telugu Titans have not defeated UP Yoddhas in the last four encounters with the last win coming way back in 2019.

PKL 9 Broadcast

Time - 08:30 PM

Streaming - Star Sports / Disney + Hotstar