U Mumba once again demonstrated why they are serious contenders for this year's title with a 31-20 hammering of Bengal Warriors in an inter-zonal challenge match of the Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) at the Rajiv Gandhi Indoor Stadium here on Saturday.
Once again, Mumbai witnessed a collective effort from their raiders and defenders, which helped them register their 14th win from 19 games.
Mumbai's star raider Siddharth Desai collected seven points, while Surrender Singh, Rohit Baliyan and skipper Fazel Attrachalli chipped in with four points each.
For Bengal, Maninder Singh was the top contributor with five points, while Baldev Singh and Ran Singh picked up four points each. This was Bengal's sixth loss from 15 games.
Maninder opened Bengal's account with a successful raid but Rohit took a point during Mumbai's next raid to level the scores at 1-1. A souple of unsuccessful raids by Siddharth and Rohit saw Bengal take a 3-1 lead by the third minute.
Some great tackles and successful raids further helped Bengal to take a 5-2 lead before a super tackle by Mumbai cut the deficit to 4-5. Siddharth then came up with a raid point help Mumbai draw level at 5-5 in the ninth minute.
Mumbai then rode some great tackles and Rohit's back to back raid points to make the issue 11-7 before Siddharth's stunning raids guided his team to a 15-10 lead by half-time.
Just as the second-half kicked off, U Mumba inflicted an all-out to extend their lead to 18-10. The Fazel-led side then dominated Bengal in all departments of the game to stretch their lead to 24-13 by the 30th minute.
Bengal somehow managed to fetch a couple of points to take their tally to 15 points, but Siddharth seemed to be in no mood to relax as his brilliant two-pointer made the issue 27-16 in Mumbai's favour by the 36th minute.
Darshan Kadiyan's successful raid and a tackle point by Fazel further saw Mumbai extend their lead to 29-17 with less than two minutes to go.
Bengal collected three points in the dying moments, but Mumbai also collected a couple of points to register a comfortable 31-20 victory.
--IANS
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