Jaipur Pink Panthers beat Telugu Titans 54-35 on Wednesday to secure a place in top six in the race to playoffs of the Pro Kabaddi League season 8.
This victory has propelled the Jaipur team to the fifth spot in the points table. If they had lost this game, they would have made it difficult for themselves to qualify for the playoffs. By winning this game, they don’t have to rely on other results going their way now, provided they win their last game against Puneri Paltan.
The game against TT wasn’t going to be easy for the Panthers as Titans were already out of the race for a place in the last six and in that scenario they were playing with nothing to lose.
The other thing which Jaipur would have definitely been worried about was that the only win for the Titans in the season came against them when they lost 35-34 on 19 January.
JPP assistant coach Upendra Kumar highlighted this point as he said:
“It was an important game for us, the last time we faced Telugu Titans, we lost in the last raid, we were under pressure, the situation then wasn’t the same as that time both the teams were looking to win.
But this time, the Titans had absolutely no pressure in this game and in that case they become dangerous, the pressure was on us to win this game, but we started well.
The other thing which was good for us was that the Titans did not have either Siddharth Desai or Rajnish, that was a benefit for us.”
Kumar is not wrong as Telugu Titans raiders struggled to get going. Ankit Beniwal and Galla Raju took 14 raid points, but that many was scored by Arjun Deswal alone for the Panthers. The Panthers contributed well defensively as well as their skipper Sandeep Dhull completed his High 5.
On being asked about what are the plans for the playoffs, Upendra Kumar insisted that the team’s focus right now is not on the playoffs. Instead, they are looking at one game at a time and they are only thinking about their last game against Puneri Paltan right now.
