PKL 2019, Match 15 Preview: Right corner a concern for Bengaluru Bulls

In Match 14 of VIVO Pro Kabaddi League, PKL 2019, U Mumba will take on defending champions Bengaluru Bulls at NSCI SVP Stadium in Mumbai on Sunday’s second match. After Siddharth Desai's departure, Abhishek Singh has emerged as a lead raider for Mumbai. He put up a consistent performance in Pro Kabaddi 2019 with 23 raid points in 3 matches including one SUPER 10. On the other hand, Bengaluru need to brush up their defence as right corner is still a cause of concerns for defending champions. The Bengaluru Bulls defence has had two contrasting performances in PKL 2019 so far. Against Patna Pirates they scored 15 tackle points with 3 defenders scoring 4 or more tackle points. However, in the match against Gujarat Fortunegiants they scored just 5 tackle points with only 2 defenders scoring tackle points.

Check Pro Kabaddi schedule and points table here
 
Player Battle

Pawan Sehrawat vs U Mumba’s defensive trio

Pawan Sehrawat has a negative head to head against all the three U Mumba’s main defenders

• 2 – 5 vs Sandeep Narwal
• 1 – 2 vs Fazel Atrachali
• 1 – 3 vs Surender Singh

Pawan Sehrawat After First 2 Games – PKL 2018 vs PKL 2019
Season	Raids	Raid Points	Super 10s	Avg. Raid Pts.	Raid SR	Avg. Time Off Court
PKL 7	29	17	0	8.5	59	21:19
PKL 6	29	34	2	17.0	117	07:49

 

Being a right raider Pawan will be directly up against the left corner-right cover pairing of Fazel-Surender against whom he has a combined 2-5 record. While Pawan has a 2-5 record against Sandeep Narwal, all of these duels have come before PKL 6, before this new and improved version Mumbai’s defence. All 5 successful tackles for Sandeep against Pawan have come ahead of the baulk line very similar to how he has been scoring tackle points this season. We saw this in the first game against Telugu Titans when he used the same strategy against Siddharth Desai.

U Mumba’s Defensive Trio – PKL 2019
Defender	Matches	Tackle Points	Avg. Tackle Pts.	Tackle SR	High 5s
Fazel Atrachali	3	10	3.3	56	0
Surinder Singh	3	9	3.0	53	0
Sandeep Narwal	3	8	2.7	62	0

 

U Mumba vs Bengaluru Bulls head to head
 
Head to head, U Mumba has dominated against Bengaluru winning 10 out of 12 matches while Bulls win only two. The 10 matches lost against U Mumba is the joint-highest for Bengaluru Bulls (have also lost 10 against Patna Pirates).

Match No.	U Mumba	Bengaluru Bulls	Result
PKL 6, Match 63	32	29	U Mumba won by 3 points
PKL 5, Match 98	42	30	U Mumba won by 12 points
PKL 4, Match 49	27	28	Bengaluru won by 1 point
PKL 4, Match 23	24	23	U Mumba won by 1 point
PKL 3, Match 44	39	18	U Mumba won by 21 points

 

U Mumba vs Bengaluru Bulls probable starting seven 
 

U Mumba	Vs	Bengaluru Bulls
Sandeep Narwal	Right Corner	Vijay Kumar
Dong Geon Lee	Right In	Pawan Sehrawat
Surender Singh	Right Cover	Ashish Sangwan
Rohit Baliyan	Center	Rohit Kumar ©
Harendra Kumar	Left Cover	Mahender Singh
Abhishek Singh	Left In	Sumit Singh
Fazel Atrachali ©	Left Corner	Amit Sheoran