Pawan Sehrawat is not only important for Tamil Thalaivas but the whole country, asserts J. Udaya Kumar

‘Hi Flyer’ got injured in the first game of the season.

Tamil Thalaivas’ captain and talisman Pawan Sehrawat did not get his dream reunion with the Bengaluru public. Pawan suffered an agonizing knee injury while defending against the Gujarat Giants and had to be stretchered off.

Update on Pawan’s injury

Despite no initial clarity on the timeline of his return from injury, Tamil Thalaivas coach J. Udaya Kumar provided a substantial update following his team’s narrow defeat against the Haryana Steelers. Speaking in the press conference, coach Kumar explained how the injury recovery matters more to the National Kabaddi Team’s Asian Games campaign. He said, “Pawan Sehrawat is not important only for Tamil Thalaivas but for the whole country. He will play a big role in India’s Asian Games campaign. The doctors have given us some advice and we are following that. We will not take any risks, he will go through a proper rehab and then come back. He will be out for some time.”

Analyzing the 27-22 defeat to the Steelers

The coach also mentioned that the game strategy against the Steelers was to make the most of their defence. “Both teams had very strong defences and we had to minimize the influence that Pawan Sehrawat would have had. We tried to slow the pace of the game. This is why the score was low. We made a couple of unwanted mistakes. We wanted to stay in the game as long as we could, keeping in mind the seven-point difference.”

On the strategy behind maintaining such a low-scoring tempo, coach Udaya Kumar said, “We compared the strengths and weaknesses of both teams first and only then decided to prioritize our defence. They (Steelers) have a strong cover combination. That is why we contained our raiders from taking risks. We played patiently and one super raid for either team could have turned the result either way.”

Sagar’s captaincy debut

Sagar spoke on his captaincy debut, saying that he knew what his responsibilities were as soon as Pawan went off injured. “Our raiders did some minor errors, if they had been a bit more aggressive in the first half, we could have won this game. We stuck to the coach’s game plan throughout and that will be the priority going ahead,” said the right corner who ended the game with a High 5.

The road ahead for the Tamil Thalaivas

The Thalaivas spent just under half their auction budget on Pawan Sehrawat and with him out of the action, the team faces an uphill task to make the cut for the playoffs. They currently sit tenth with one loss and one tie. Young defender Sagar will lead the side until Pawan’s return, and the raiding burden will be shared between Ajinkya Pawar and the raw but talented duo of Narender and Himanshu.