Randhir Singh Sehrawat: We wanted to beat Tamil Thalaivas comprehensively

A raiding masterclass from Pawan Sehrawat powered Bengaluru Bulls past Tamil Thalaivas by a scoreline of 33-27 at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium in Bengaluru on Sunday. Though they lost the match, Tamil Thalaivas managed to keep the score difference under seven points and hence secured a point from the contest. At the post-match press conference, skipper Rohit Kumar, coach Randhir Singh Sehrawat and raider Pawan Sehrawat took questions for Bengaluru Bulls, while Tamil Thalaivas were represented by coach E. Bhaskaran and skipper Ajay Thakur.

Bengaluru Bulls

Q. Thoughts on Pawan Sehrawat's performance?

Randhir Singh Sehrawat: Pawan bides his time at the start before hitting top gear. He’s much more effective in the second half than in the first. So, we need to be able to deal with the first half. And of course, he played brilliant today. But so did the rest of the team. Tamil Thalaivas are an excellent team. And to beat them is a big achievement. We wanted to beat them comprehensively, by more than seven.

Q. Manjeet Chhillar had a few unsuccessful tacklestonight. How do you deal with an experiencedplayer like him?

Randhir Singh Sehrawat: Manjeet is a colossal defender. We knew we couldn’t afford to give him any points. Hence, we decided to play without a left-sided raider, because he’s really dominant against them. Once you starve a player like him for points, naturally, he will get restless and try an aggressive tackle. So, we planned to neutralise him that way and were fairly successful in doing so.

Q. What was the difference between yesterday's game and today’s?

Pawan Sehrawat: The coach's scolding (laughs). No, but in all seriousness, we just went over what went wrong yesterday and worked on how to avoid those mistakes. The coach has been constantly telling me since yesterday that he has full faith in me and that I would perform today. That was the key to today’s performance.Tamil Thalaivas

Q. What went wrong in the second half?

Ajay Thakur: We lost momentum when I was Super Tackled early in the second period. So that’s where we lost the initiative and couldn’t regain it.

Q. The team couldn’t stop Pawan today. What was the main reason for that?

Bhaskaran: We had planned that Mohit (Chhillar) would initiate all the tackles on Pawan. And the rest of the team would follow his lead. But, we were too impatient and committed to tacklestoo close to the midline, thereby, giving up easy touch points.

Q. Did you feel the raiding unit didn’t perform well?

Bhaskaran: The raiders were scoring regularly. They didn’t score as many as we'd hoped for, but they were providing points. We couldn’t stop the leaks from the defence and that, probably,was the difference between us and them.