Kuldeep Singh unlikely hero in U Mumba’s first home win

In a game that U Mumba were desperate to win, Anup Kumar and Kuldeep Singh kept the side together to get them over the line at the DOME@NSCI SVP Stadium in Mumbai on Wednesday. Haryana Steelers missed their star raider Vikas Kandola in the second half and were overcome by the U Mumba defence in the final minutes to suffer their second loss to the Mumbai-based franchise in Season 5 of VIVO Pro Kabaddi.

U Mumba started the game in an aggressive fashion and raced to an early 7-2 lead in just the 7^th minute. They had to wait till the 13^th minute to inflict an All-Out, though, as Kashiling Adake and Anup Kumar’s brilliance was once again undone by a mediocre defensive display. They had a huge 8-point lead in the next raid with an 18-10 scoreline thanks to a Shrikant Jadhav super raid. On the other side, Kandola was equally lethal for the Steelers and did not let the game slip away from them. At half time, U Mumba had a 20-15 lead but only 3 players left on the mat.

Kuldeep led the defensive charge for U Mumba in the second half and reached his High 5 with a super tackle on Kandola as the home team took a 23-16 advantage. But even he couldn’t stop a U Mumba All-Out on the back of a Deepak Kumar Dahiya super raid. Deepak had to take over as the primary raider when Kandola picked up an injury in the second half, and he did a brilliant job levelling the score at 27-27 in the 10^th minute of the second half. Hadi Oshtorak was brought on by U Mumba mid-way through the second half to strengthen the defence and he justified their faith in him by putting in two consecutive super tackles. U Mumba took a 34-30 lead with 4 minutes still left on the clock and held onto to it till the end to win with a 38-32 score line.

With this win U Mumba now replace their opponents Haryana Steelers in third position on the Zone A leaderboard with a home game still to be played tomorrow against Jaipur Pink Panthers.

Check out our snapshots from this match here.