Meraj Sheykh and Pradeep Narwal lead their team to victory!

Day 2 of Vivo Pro Kabaddi League 2017 witnessed close games and the captains of the winning team led from the front. Dabang Delhi KC registered their Inaugural win of the tournament by winning a close game against Jaipur Pink Panthers. While the home team Telugu Titans were defeated by a very composed side Patna Pirates. The Gachibowli Indoor Stadium had filled with kabaddi fans and the focus today was on the Jaipur Pink Panther owner Mr. Abhishek Bachchan!

A post shared by Pro Kabaddi (@prokabaddi) on Jul 29, 2017 at 9:36am PDT

The first game today was Match Number 3: Jaipur Pink Panthers and Dabang Delhi KC. Jaipur Pink Panthers are the Inaugural Pro Kabaddi League champions, while Dabang Delhi has always been at the bottom teams of the league every season. But this year Delhi has a very balanced side and the Meraj Sheykh (Iran) is the captain of the team. Jaipur Pink Panthers bought Manjeet Chhillar this season which added flexibility in their squad.

The starting few seconds Jaipur was dominating the Dabang Delhi by 11 – 4, after Dabang were pretty much settle with the team combination and tactics the kept the point difference of 7 points stable till the first half. Later it was Meraj Sheykh the all rounder captain who lead the team bought some crucial raid points. Also former captain Nilesh Shinde supported Meraj in defense and scored a “Hi 5” in this match. With Jasvir Singh’s poor performance in raid and Navneet Gautam struggle in defense is where the team tumbled in second half. Dabang Delhi K.C. won against Jaipur Pink Panthers by 30-26.

Delhi winning their first game was a big surprise and reaction from Kabaddi lovers said it all:

Surprisingly a DHAMAKEDAAR START by Delhi???
Jaipur dominated them in first 10 mins only, after that Delhi thrashed Jaipur. #JAIvDEL
— Aarohi Shergil (@AarohiShergil) July 29, 2017

The second game today was Match Number 4: Telugu Titans and Patna Pirates. After defeating Tamil Thalaivas in opening game, Telugu Titans were high on confidence but they were facing the best outfit of Pro Kabaddi 2017. It was one to one competition between Telugu Titans captain Rahul Chaudhary aka “Raid Machine” and Patna Pirates captain Pradeep Narwal aka “dupki king”. Dupki is the specialty of the Pradeep where he escape the defense chain by jumping over it aka “dupki”.

It was a thrilling first half as both teams were scoring at same level and pressure was building on both side. Both captains were scoring raid points for their team and defense supported them. By the end of first half the score was 14 – 15 where the pirates were leading by just one run. After the first Patna lost some control in defense, where Vishal Mane was shown Yellow Card and was suspended for few minutes. Telegu Titans took advantage of this panic situation and started building their lead. It was then Rahul Chaudhary who got nerves about his single point that would have completed his 500 raid points in Pro Kabaddi history and then it was the Patna Pirates defense that didn’t allow Rahul Chaudhary to fire back. In the end it was Patna Pirates beating Telugu Titans by 35-29.

Pradeep Narwal scored 15 points and the most crucial was his signature move “dupki” in crucial minutes of second half. Vishal Mane despite getting a Yellow card supported his team scoring 3 important tackle points.

Happy Patna fans celebrating on twitter: