UP Yoddha served a sweet revenge to Patna Pirates, defeating them by a margin of 16 points. With our chances still alive for the playoffs, Yoddha headed to a tough challenge of taking down a strong Patna Pirates at the Tau Devi Lal Stadium, Panchkula, Haryana on Sunday. Our regular raiders Srikant and Prashanth put their best foot forward to get us points galore while the surprise in the form of Azad Singh turned the game around for us.

Our scorecard started ticking with a bonus point by Shrikant. While a technical point in Pardeep Narwal’s next raid helped us further, Prashanth’s raids helped us draw level. Despite Pirates’ powerful start in the match, our defenders did not let Pardeep have successful raids. Prashant showed top-class raiding skills, taking down four of the Pirates in his consecutive raids to impose an All-Out with over five minutes still remaining in the first half of the match. However, once the full-strength Pirates’ squad were on the mat, their raiders kept on eliminating our players one after the other quickly. With just Sagar Krishna on the mat, a crucial substitution brought Azad Singh in. In his very first raid, he picked up one bonus and two touch points – reviving two of our defenders and pulling off a Super Raid. The eventful half came to an end as we kept the lead by 22-17.

Coming back for the next half, Azad continued his work, getting touch point to revive another Yoddha on the mat. Our defenders tackled the next raider to reduce them to a team of three on the mat. Azad pulled off yet another remarkable raid, getting two of their players out while Sachin got rid of the last man standing – Manjeet – to get the Pirates All Out for the second time in the game.

With 10 minutes remaining, we led the tables 22-40. Prashanth, meanwhile, completed his consecutive Super 10. The Pirates made a comeback at this point in the game, but our defenders kept their good work going. While Jeeva and Nitesh were at their usual best, Sachin’s brilliant holds earned him ‘High 5’. Azad looked at his best, hardly failing in any of his raids.

The entire team put in their bit to take us to a final scoreline of 47-31 to snatch the game away.

With 10 raid points from 13 raids, Prashanth took home the Perfect Raider of the Match award, while Sachin’s High 5 performance won him the Defender of the Match. Azad Singh’s game-changing Super Raid won him the Moment of the Match award.