PKL 9: Bengal Warriors will face Haryana Steelers in their campaign opener

Season 7 champions are looking to start the season with the win.

Both Haryana Steelers and Bengal Warriors could not make it to the playoffs in PKL season 8 finishing 7th and 9th respectively. Both the teams have currently appointed new coaches ( Haryana - Manpreet Singh, Bengal Warriors - Baskaran) and will look to change their fortunes in PKL 9.

Team News

Bengal Warriors

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

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

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

Haryana Steelers

Raiders: Prapanjan, Rakesh Narwal, Manjeet, Vinay, Mohammad Mahalli, Lovepreet Singh, Sushil, Meetu, Manish Gulia.

All-Rounders: Nitin Rawal.

Defenders: Joginder Narwal, Jaideep, Mohit, Ankit, Monu, Naveen, Harsh, Sunny, Amirhossein Bastami.

Head to Head

Haryana Steelers and Bengal Warriors have faced each other 6 times with Haryana maintaining a 5-1 lead. The only time Bengal Warriors beat Haryana Steelers was back in season 7.

Player to watch

Haryana Steelers have picked up a young Iranian defender Amir Hossein Bastami who has led Iran at the Junior World Cup. Bastami will combine with the experienced Joginder Narwal to form a formidable duo against Maninder Singh.

Deepak Niwas Hooda will play a major role in the attack as a secondary raider and shall look to help the defence.

Key to Success

For Bengal Warriors the raiding department has to click with the presence of Maninder Singh, Shrikanth Jadhav, and Deepak Hooda. The defence doesn't look strong enough to threaten the opposition but can come good.

Haryana Steelers have good raiding depth but do not possess a star raider to shoulder the bulk of the responsibilities. They have good young raiders like Meetu and Vinay to step up. It will then raiding of Bengal to take on the defence of Haryana.

Did you know

Joginder Narwal has 204 tackle points overall in the history of PKL playing the league since season 2.

Broadcast

Time - 09:30 PM

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