PKL 2024: Tamil Thalaivas beat Bengal Warriors by 31 points

Thalaivas defeated Bengal by a margin of 60-29 on Wednesday at the badminton hall of Balewadi Sports Complex in the 11th season of the Pro Kabaddi League. Thalaivas got their seventh win in 20 matches while Bengal suffered their 12th loss in the same number of matches. Moin Shafagi (13), Himanshu (13), Sai Prasad (6), and defender Nitesh (7) shone in Thalaivas' victory while Manjeet Choudhary scored the highest seven points for Bengal without Fazel Atrachali. Bengal's team was all-out four times.

In the first 10 minutes, Thalaivas took an all-out once and took a lead of 16-6. Sai Prasad pushed Bengal on the backfoot with a four-point raid. The defense played an important role in Bengal's all-out as it did not let star raider like Maninder open his account during this time. After the all-in, Shafagi again gave a big blow to Bengal with a super raid. The lead became 19-6. Meanwhile, Maninder opened his account and completed 100 raid points this season. With five minutes to play, Thalaivas forced a super tackle on Bengal with a lead of 22-9.

However, Bengal avoided an all-out by pulling back three consecutive points after this, and the gap was 10 again. Thalaivas did hold on from this point forward and changed sides when leading at 25-13. After the restart as well, Thalaivas pushed Bengal into another super tackle, and thanks to Shafagi then converted into an all-out to take the lead at 30-14. Even after the all-in, Shafagi hurt Bengal with a multi-pointer. He had completed a super-10 and the gap had become 20 points. Also, a super tackle was on for Bengal. After this, Bastami and Shafagi pushed towards an all-out, but Manjeet brought about a revival with a multi-pointer.

After this, Nitesh did a super tackle to Shafagi and made the score 19-37 at the end of 30 minutes. However, after the break, Himanshu took the third all-out for Thalaivas by dismissing Nitesh and Siddhesh. Now Thalaivas were ahead by 42-19. Meanwhile, Nitesh completed his seventh High-5. 20 unsuccessful tackles have brought Bengal to this state.

Thalaivas's havoc continued, and in the last few minutes of the game, the once-again-to-an-all out brought the Bengal side. Meanwhile, Himanshu finished off with Super 10 in the bag. Later with the fourth all-out Thalaivas led at a score of 56-23, the end times were on Bengal needed a miracle at that stage comeback to seal.