Dabang Delhi beat Tamil Thalaivas in thrilling PKL contest

Ahmedabad, Aug 18 :Zone A team Dabang Delhi K.C fought till the dying minutes of the match to edge past Zone B side Tamil Thalaivas 30-29 in an inter-zone contest of the Pro Kabaddi League's (PKL) fifth edition at the Transstadia Arena here on Thursday.

With this win, Delhi rose to the third spot in the group standings.

Skipper Meraj Sheykh (nine points) led Delhi from the front along with defender Viraj Langde (two points) to help their side clinch win by a single point.

For Chennai, a valiant effort from their skipper Ajay Thakur (13 points) went in vain as the team failed to keep their nerves in the last few minutes of the match.

Sheykh opened the scoring for Delhi with a successful raid. Later, the Delhi outfit started to show their defensive strength forcing the opposition to a do-or-die raid and not allowing them any point.

Delhi took a slender 5-2 lead with their all-round show in the seventh minute of the match.

Along with Sheyk, Rohit Balyan and Ravi Dalal combined in unison to pick important raid and tackle points consistently in the dying minutes of the first half to keep the match tight.

After a couple of empty raids in the initial minutes, K. Prapanjan got Tamil Thalaivas back on level terms from successful raids with the opposition.

Thalaivas did not lose grip on the match by pulling out a super tackle which gave them two points followed by skipper Ajay Thakur's successful raid to equalise at six within the 10th minute in the match.

The first-half ended with both the teams squared up sharing 12-points each.

In the second-half after a couple of empty raids from both the sides, Thalaivas broke the deadlock with a super tackle which helped them take a slender two-point lead initially.

Thalaivas continued to add to their points tally clinching points through tackles along with Thakur grabbing successful raids to complete his Super-10 but failed to clinch the decisive point to seal the match.

For Delhi, substitute Abolfazl Maghsodlou initiated the scoring for his side through a successful tackle and later clinched a single bonus point.

Delhi kept themselves in the match by pulling a super tackle initially and from a few successful raid points by the Iranian but failed to keep momentum in the second half giving away easy raid points resulting into their all-out.

However, in the dying moments of the match, Shubham Palkar combined well along with Sheykh who picked up three points through his super raid to help his side register win by a slender margin.