PKL 2019 | Winning both games against Bengaluru Bulls helped our confidence, says Nitesh Kumar

PKL 2019 | Winning both games against Bengaluru Bulls helped our confidence, says Nitesh Kumar

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PKL

UP Yoddha skipper Nitesh Kumar has said that winning both games against Bengaluru Bulls in the league stage helped in increasing UP's confidence for the eliminator clash against the defending champions. He also explained about the must-win and how one mistake can end their campaign.

UP Yoddha is going to face Bengaluru Bulls in the first eliminator today and coincidently their last league stage match was against the defending champions as well. UP Yoddha won both their league-stage encounters against them while they won the first encounter by just two points, the second one was won by 12 points. The credit, however, goes to their balanced raiding unit in which they don’t rely on one raider but have at least three options. The team has a good headache ahead of them as Srikant Jadhav, Monu Goyat, Rishank Devadiga and Surender Gill all are playing well and the coach had to decide who is going to play in the starting seven.

“The tough battle begins here, one mistake and we are out. The team has worked and prepared hard to ensure that we give our best against a strong offensive Bengaluru Bulls team. During the league stage, we won both games against Bengaluru Bulls which helps our confidence but this one is going to be the toughest and a win will take us into the Semi-Finals.” UP Yoddha skipper Nitesh Kumar said.

Though the defending champions have qualified for the playoffs, they had the least wins and finished at the sixth position after the league matches got over. Pawan Sehrawat have been burdened with too much responsibility of being the lead raider as well as the skipper in the absence of Rohit Kumar. The defence started well but lost their way in the middle and apart from players like Saurabh Nandal and Mahender Singh, the others weren't able to make much of an impact. In this match, they would focus on the positives and hope not to repeat the same mistakes in the league stages. 

“The league stages were tough but it allowed us to study our opponents as we played them more than once. However, now that we are in a knockout situation, we have to play to our strengths. We have a strategy in place against UP Yoddha’s strong defensive squad and we will do our best to ensure we retain the Title," explained Pawan.

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