HYDERABAD: Cricket can take a back seat for now as kabaddi is set to keep prime time viewers engaged with Season 7 of the
Pro Kabaddi League (PKL), which gets underway at the Gachibowli Indoor stadium here on Saturday.
A young and new-look
Telugu Titans will look to make a fresh beginning as they take on former champions
U Mumba in the inaugural match while defending champions Benguluru Bulls have their task cut out as they face three-time former champions
Patna Pirates in a potentially high-voltage clash.
Hosts Telugu Titans will be without the services of ‘Raid Machine’ Rahul Chaudhari, who was with the franchise since the inception of PKL in 2014. Rahul has been replaced by an equally explosive raider in Siddharth Desai, who was bought for a staggering price of Rs 1.45 crore.
Titans have been disappointing in PKL so far. Despite having all-time best raider Chaudhari in their ranks, Titans had failed to fire as a team and their best finish was third place in Season 2. Hence, the move to replace Chaudhari, PKL’s top scorer with 876 points, with Desai, the best debutant raider in Season 6.
It will be interesting to see how the 28-year-old Siddharth, who scored 218 points in his maiden season for U Mumba last year, will fare here. Incidentally, Siddharth and the new head coach of the Titans, Gholamreza Mazandarani of Iran, were with U Mumba last season.
“It’s a fact that I know a lot of players in the U Mumba squad and their strengths and weakness. But that doesn’t really matter. We have to play to our strengths. We have star raider Siddharth Desai in our side. A lot depends on how he performs. Our main target is qualify for playoffs,” said Mazandarani, who coached Iran to a stunning gold medal at the Jakarta Asian Games last year, ending India’s 28-year golden run with a 27-18 victory in the semifinals.
Comparing his stint with the Iran squad, he said, “The challenge here is different. We have several quality teams vying for top honours. It’s a tough task ahead,” said Mazandarani.
Benguluru begin their title defence against Pirates led by
Pardeep Narwal
, who tops the raid points in PKL with 858 points.
Bengaluru will be fielding almost an unchanged team that helped them clinch their maiden PKL title beating Gujarat Fortunegiants 38-33 last season. The duo of skipper Rohit Kumar (162 points) and Pawan Sehrawat (217 points) combined well to score 433 points to lead Bengaluru to title last year. An equally impressive Mahender Singh in defence will be an asset for the champions while Patna look to put behind their poor show last time.
“We have retained the same time that won the championship last year. This time we hope to play even better,” said
Bengaluru Bulls coach Randhir Singh.
Speaking about the preparations against Patna, he said, “If we have Pardeep, they have Pawan. If they have Lee Jung Kun we have Rohit. It will definitely be a tough challenge. We are fully geared up,” he said.
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