Mumbai: In a positive start to their home campaign, U Mumba exacted sweet revenge over state rivals Puneri Paltan, beating them 34-31 in a strong performance led by their captain Anup Kumar who top scored with 11 points overall. This win pushes them into the top four with 32 points from 6 wins.
It was imperative for the home team to begin the match strongly because of the memories of their loss to Puneri Paltan earlier in the season. Despite a couple of quick points by captain Anup, it looked like U Mumba would need to pull something spectacular out of the bag to defeat the Pune outfit. The star of their previous encounter, Ajay Thakur was surprisingly ineffective in the first 5 minutes and was kept quiet by the defence of Jeeva Kumar and Surjeet who used brute force through his dashes to keep the raider at bay.
Star raider for U Mumba Rishank Devadiga used the support of his home crowd to get back in groove, scoring a vital two points in a do or die raid that saw the Pune outfit being reduced to two men. The all-out might have been delayed by Sonu Narwal but it eventually came in the 17th minute with the score moving to 14-9. The early lead was quickly reduced through an Ajay Thakur super raid that saw both captain Anup and Rakesh Kumar being eliminated. This came just at the cusp of half-time, with the score being 15-13.
With two men left on the mat for the home team, Rishank tried to put his defensive talents to use but despite a substitute being used in Vikash Kumar, the all-out came for U Mumba just 3 minute after half-time giving Puneri Paltan a lead of 3 points. Anup continued to impress despite being tackled for the first time in the match but Pune looked rejuvenated by the all-out that they had secured and continued to maintain that three-point lead. A technical point was awarded to U Mumba through Joginder Narwal being handed a yellow card and from then on, U Mumba never looked back. Rishank continued to churn out successful raids while Anup put in a couple of superb ankle holds in defence to hold off Ajay Thakur.
An impressive dash by Surjeet on Sonu Narwal didn't have the desired effect but the Pune outfit were soon reduced to two men and there for the taking. Preetham Chhillar, the last man for Pune, came in to raid but was no match for the power of Surjeet, the second all-out for Pune coming in the 37th minute and taking the score to 30-27.
Ajay Thakur managed to touch Rakesh in the raid after that but with Anup's quick thinking and a chase, the raider found himself out of the mat before he could return to the formation. A couple of tackles and an error by Rakesh that saw him step out of the lobby rounded off the match with the captain himself riding out the buzzer raid to seal the 34-31 win and a good start to the home campaign.
The captain, who scored 11 points (9 raid points and 2 tackle points), reminded everyone of how the team used to play earlier. "Tonight we felt it was the U Mumba of old. We must keep up this performance in the remaining games." When asked about the effect that the absence of Puneri captain Manjeet Chhillar had on the game, Coach Bhaskaran conceded that while he was talented, they won on their own merit. "Everyone knows what a good player Manjeet is. Of course he would have made an impact to the game. But I won't say we won because he wasn't in."
U Mumba take on Telugu Titans tomorrow on the 21st of July at Dome @ NSCI SVP Stadium.
