Puneri Paltan moved away from bottom spot in the vivo Pro Kabaddi Season 7 standings after a 31-23 win over Bengaluru Bulls at the Jawaharlal Nehru Indoor Stadium in Chennai on Wednesday. Shortly after the match, Puneri Paltan’s coach Anup Kumar and skipper Surjeet Singh spoke to reporters at the post-match press conference, while captain Rohit Kumar and star raider ‘Hi-Flyer’ Pawan Sehrawat represented Bengaluru Bulls.

Puneri Paltan

Puneri Paltan’s coach Anup Kumar gives instructions during the game.

Q. Coach, what are your thoughts on the match?

Anup Kumar: I am very happy with the win. My team’s performance hadn’t been that great and after beating such a good team (Bengaluru Bulls), it feels great. They have the best raider in India in Pawan Sehrawat as well as Rohit Kumar and to contain them so well shows how strong our defence is. They are very capable but struggled to perform. I’m very happy with Nitin Tomar’s performance too, that’s why I played him. He’s fit but needs a bit of confidence sometimes.

Q. Consecutive wins can see you rise in the table quickly. Do you agree?

Anup Kumar: Absolutely. We’ll try to keep winning and it’s good for the confidence of the team that we won today. Whoever played today, performed well and that proves that our substitutes are also good. They are very capable and can perform well. My objective is that we have two games in Delhi now and if we win both those games then then we’ll climb the table. It’s very important that we win those two games.

Q. What are your thoughts on the second half?

Anup Kumar: Our captain Surjeet Singh was injured yesterday in practice and required stitches but he still wanted to play. Even after coming to the stadium, I asked him if he wants to play or not? He’s injured so it doesn’t matter if he didn’t play the game. But his confidence was so much that I had to play him because if someone is so confident, the chances of a team losing is minimal.   

Bengaluru Bulls

Bengaluru Bulls’ skipper Rohit Kumar and Pawan Sehrawat at the post-match press conference.

Q. Rohit, what are your thoughts on the game?

Rohit Kumar: We were a bit loose from the start itself. There was no direction to our team on the mat like there was in our last match. The plan was for me and Pawan Sehrawat to raid and get points where there were available without giving too many tackle points to the opposition. Surjeet Singh had played well in the previous match as well but that’s where we made mistakes. Our coach had warned us about his advanced tackles, but we still made the mistake and didn’t receive much support while raiding, which is why we lost. 

Q. Pawan, what went wrong?

Pawan Sehrawat: Both defences performed very well today. We lost the contest today because of our raiders. There were a lot of mistakes while raiding and even I was tackled multiple times. Hence, even though we defended well, in the end their raiders came to the fore.

Q. Rohit, disappointed about not taking any points from the match?

Rohit Kumar: Look, we tried to reduce the deficit of the loss to at least seven points but we didn’t succeed. You never know when these extra points that one can gain from losing by less than seven points comes to use. Last year we topped our group by a few points, so that’s what we were aiming for at the end, but we weren’t successful in doing so.