It was another disappointing performance by the crowd favourite Telugu Titans as defending champion Patna Pirates notched up an impressive 43-36 win in the final match of the Hyderabad-leg of the Vivo ProKabaddi League here on Thursday night.
The winner, who led 23-16 at the break, recorded their fifth win in 11 meetings against Titans, who suffered a shocking fifth defeat in a row in six matches this season. For Pirates, it was a second win in as many matches against Titans.
The Titans’ defence left a lot to be desired and as the game progressed, the focus seemed to be on one individual — Rahul Chaudhari. But he struggled and the sight of him being pinned down by the defence frequently was not encouraging. Titans looked disjointed and failed to provide the much-needed cheer to the fans. On the other hand, it was another stand-out performance by the Pirates with captain Pardeep Narwal leading from the front with nine raid points It was quite apparent that the raiders had always the liberty to fall back on defence manned so efficiently by Monu Goyat and Vishal Mane.
The champion controlled the game better and took a 20-15 lead. Though the Titans showed enterprise in the dying minutes, when they scored an all-out and Rahul earned two touch-points, to narrow the score to 33-41, it was a bit too late to change the script as Pirates emerged a comfortable winner.