The way Dabangg Delhi started the season, it looked like they were invincibles, but then came their first loss of the season against Jaipur Pink Panthers where they lost by a close margin of two points.
Before their win on Saturday against the Haryana Steelers, Delhi were beaten comprehensively by Bengaluru Bulls by a record margin of 39 points. Delhi’s star raider Naveen Kumar missed that game due to an injury.
He returned for their encounter against Haryana Steelers, but the opposition’s defence ensured that he didn’t get back to his groove. The Haryana team, it seemed, came fully prepared to tackle the 26-year-old.
The Steelers started the game with five out and out defenders and got success instantly as Naveen was ousted in his very first raid. The plan to go in with a defence-heavy starting seven seemed to work as per plan for Steelers as Naveen was tackled by four different defenders in the first half itself.
However, Naveen got injured in the second half, and raiding duties fell on Vijay’s shoulders, who ended up snatching victory from nowhere against the Steelers.
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On being asked if the defence could have played better in an interaction with the media, Rakesh Kumar, Haryana Steelers coach, seemed satisfied with the defence’s performance. He pointed out that apart from the errors in the last two-three raids of the game, the performance of the defence was impressive in the majority of the game.
“I think if our raiders scored more points, the result might have been different”,
said Kumar.
Vikas Khandola, the most experienced raider for Steelers could only manage three raid points and proved to be a decisive factor in the end.
Overall as well, despite Naveen’s injury during mid-game Dabang Delhi scored 19 raid points as compared to Steelers 15.
