Pune gets a dose of Tamil flavour in kabaddi

PUNE: The Shree Shiv Chhatrapati Indoor Stadium in Pune was heavy on ‘Tamil’ flavour in the match between Bengal Warriors and Tamil Thalaivas in the Pro Kabaddi League Season 9 on Wednesday.

The Warriors’ Tamil involvement came in the form of its head coach Kasinathan Baskaran, who won the inaugural league title with Jaipur Pink Panthers in 2014. While the triumph marked one of the high points of his coaching career, not long after that he also had the unpleasant experience of being sacked as the Thalaivas coach in 2017.

After waiting for four ‘long’ years to make a comeback to the PKL in coaching capacity, Baskaran would surely be desirous of emulating his first season’s heroics in the current edition. Talk was rife before the match about how the 54-year-old Baskaran would be itching to settle a score with his former employer for being meted out a ‘raw deal’.

That will now have to wait until November 21, when these two teams square off against each other in Hyderabad, as they were engaged in a captivating 41-41 tie on Wednesday. The two teams dished out a humdinger of a contest with the result being uncertain until the final raid.

In contrast, his counterpart, Ashan Kumar, who only became the Thalaivas head coach midway through this campaign, had to race against time to get himself acquainted with his new set of players and, more importantly, analyse why it got off to such a horrid start that resulted in the unceremonious sacking of his predecessor J Udaya Kumar.

It must be said that Ashan’s unveiling as coach has come as a breath of fresh air for the Thalaivas as it looked to be going up a blind alley until then. Ashan might be holding an invisible magic wand for how else would you explain the team’s drastic improvement so soon after him assuming charge. Thalaivas earned memorable wins over Jaipur and Dabang Delhi in its two previous matches and that was no child’s play as they were opponents that are placed much higher in the table.

Sharing his thoughts post-match, Baskaran said that he was delighted with his team’s gutsy show in the latter stages of the game after trailing by a considerable margin at half-time. Touching upon the aspects he would want to set right before the next match, Baskaran said that the defence is something he is working on and he is making a concerted effort to weed out the defensive inadequacies.

Ashan said that he wasn’t too upset at having to settle for three points as Bengal is a formidable foe. “It boasts of experienced raiders in Maninder Singh, Deepak Hooda and Shrikant Jadhav. I am pleased with getting three points.”

Kasinathan Baskaran