Ahemdabad: Raider Ajay Thakur top-scored with 12 invaluable points and helped India beat Iran to win the 2016 Kabaddi World Cup in a closely contested match, here on Saturday.

This is India’s third consecutive World Cup win. Incidentally, Iran was playing India for the third time in the final but have failed to beat them in the tournament.

Iran was leading by 18-13 after the first half break but India fought back bravely to register a convincing 38-29 win, gaining 25 points in the second half. Iran’s resolute defence was in the way but Ajay Thakur’s heroic performance helped India in winning the World Cup for the third consecutive time.

India managed to take a lead of 2-0 as Sandeep Narwal and Ajay Thakur scored the raid point in the third minute. Iran were in the mood of a tough fight-back as they equalled the score in the fourth minute itself by Meraj Sheykh.

Iran took 5-4 lead in the eighth minute, but captain Anup Kumar helped India level the score by 6-6 in the 10th minute.

Iran got the first all man out in the 19th minute to lead 16-12.India was on a back-foot at the end of first half by 13-18.

However, Ajay Thakur took India to the driver’s seat by brilliantly scoring two points to level the score 20-20 in 29th minute. Therafter, India also got all man out in 30th minute to take a lead by 24-21 which was the biggest lead for India in the match.

India capitalised on this score to win the final match by 38-29 to emerge as champions.
Notably, this time Kabaddi World Cup was the most talked event and India starting as favourites could live up to the expectation and win the tournament with only one loss to South Korea to lift the title.