UP Yoddhas will be up against Puneri Paltan in tonight’s clash in the Vivo Pro Kabaddi League season 8. The last time these two sides met, records were broken as the Yoddhas defeated Paltan by 50-40, recording the highest combined score ever in league history. The star of the show for the Yoddhas was the young raider Surender Gill who scored 21 raid points in the match.
Interestingly, when you have a raid as capable and as talented as Pardeep Narwal in the team, you would not expect the support raider to score as many points as Gill did in that game. However, such has been the campaign for Narwal so far that he has not been able to find his full rhythm just yet.
With 103 raid points in 12 games, Gill has got the highest raid points for the franchise so far. Record-breaker Narwal, meanwhile, has only managed to pick 94 in 13 matches.
The 25-year-old recently became the first man in the history of the league to cross the 1200 raid points mark, but despite that, he has struggled a lot this season.
In an interaction with Hindustan Times, he revealed that he hasn’t been fully fit this season which has meant that he has not been able to give his 100 per cent on the mat.
He said that at the beginning of the season, during the camp, he injured his ankle, and he had to play the first five-six games with a lot of pain. The commentators seemed to have noticed the discomfort when Pardeep was raiding in earlier games, as they pointed out that the Indian was trying to avoid a bigger injury.
Narwal is slowly finding his feet and has done well for the Yoddhas in their most recent games. Yoddhas performance in their last five games have been better, and most of its credit is to be given to Gill. Pardeep also heaped praise on his teammate.
“He has been supporting me extremely well. Not just that, he’s supporting the team and also doing very well for himself.
He is very good at getting bonus points and is very efficient at scoring with his leg slip technique. Whatever he does, works very well for him,”
he said.
