Friday’s finale was as thrilling as it could get as the match was decided in the very last raid, with Delhi edging the Pirates by just one point to win the game by a 37-36 scoreline.
The game started at a slow pace as both teams did not look to attack much, the defence of both the sides played a rather passive game as compared to other games. The Pirates defence, in particular, avoided any advance tackles in the first half. Delhi’s defence did not do much in the first half either.
However, PP were able to inflict an all-out and get a small lead. The first half ended at 17-15 in favour of the Pirates.
In the second half, the Delhi team made a good comeback as Vijay Malik’s two super raids changed the match in Delhi’s favour. The first super raid took Delhi closer to inflicting an all out on Patna and the second super raid gave Delhi a substantial lead going into the last two minutes. But errors in defence by Delhi meant that Patna raiders continued to chip in with important raid points to close the gap.
There wasn’t much to distinguish between the teams as the Pirates scored 29 raid points, and Delhi took 27 raid points, while the defence of both sides earned four tackle points each.
What Patna would be fuming over, in the end, is a couple of mistakes that happened during the course of the game. The first mistake was when Neeraj was sent as the revived player out of chance, the Umpires realised it too late and awarded a technical point to Dabang Delhi.
The other mistake that the Pirates made was that they used all of their substitutions with more than five minutes still to go in the game. This left them with no first choice raider on the mat as Guman Singh, Sachin, and Prashant watched the game from the bench. Monu and Mohammed Chiyaneh tried their best in the absence of the main raiders, but it wasn’t enough in the end.
Naveen Kumar and Vijay Malik scored 13 raid points each for Delhi to take their team to victory. For the Pirates, Guman Singh managed nine raid points before being substituted.
The result means that Patna Pirates lost its first final ever. They were making their fourth appearance in the finals as they had won three back to back titles before this in season 3,4 and 5.
This was Dabang Delhi KC’s second consecutive appearance in the finals after they ended as runners up last season. This season though, they did better to clinch the trophy.
