On Wednesday, in the only game of the night in the Vivo Pro Kabaddi League, Telugu Titans made a stunning comeback in the last 16 seconds of the game to equal the score of the Haryana Steelers and secure a draw.
The Titans were trailing by 37-39 with a few seconds to go into the game, but in a quick raid, Adarsh T got a touchpoint, and then in the buzzer raid, Vikas could not cross the boug line and was tackled by the Titans defence.
It was a hard pill to swallow for Vikas Khandola as he had secured the most points for his team until then. He had also completed his fifth Super 10 of the season, but he couldn’t succeed when it mattered the most.
In the last raid, he didn’t even have the pressure to secure a raid point, he just had to do an empty raid, but he couldn’t.
Rakesh Kumar in an interaction with the media said:
“Ravi made a mistake and sent Adarsh to his half quickly. I was speaking with Ravi when Vikash went in to raid. Otherwise, I would have had a word with him. I won’t say that it is Vikash’s mistake because even the best raiders get tackled. Even when I used to play, this has happened to me. So I think luck did not favor us.”
The coach further added,
“I told my defenders not to send him to his half quickly because if they managed to kill some time, then we would not have got another chance to raid and we would have won the game. The only thing I told them was not to concede a multi-point raid.”
Rakesh was disappointed with the end result as he expected his team to win, especially after having a lead of five points going into the last three minutes of the game. The Steelers, though, couldn’t protect their lead and squandered in the end.
“Yes it is a big defeat for me, I never considered the Telugu Titans as a weak team. They are a very good team. If you see their matches, they have made comebacks even after conceding a big lead to their opponents”,
said Kumar.
