India has always been a country obsessed with cricket. Which obviously made it tough for other sports to flourish. Even our country’s national sport Hockey has suffered a lot due to the lack of attention. It even got tougher when Cricket introduced a shorter format of its game – Indian Premier League which made it even more popular and grabbed even more eyeballs. So it looked like the end of the road for other sport to ever come to the limelight.
But one sport adapted to the changing times and the timing couldn’t be perfect. The nation that was relishing on the IPL suddenly got hooked to Kabaddi with the introduction of Pro Kabaddi League and the sport has now become as popular as Cricket.
The best part of Kabaddi is its format. Two teams play the game that’s divided into 20 minutes each. So in 40 minutes, you get to know the winner. This format makes it perfect for today’s Millenials whose attention span is any which ways very less.
Out of all teams, my favorite of this season is Bengaluru Bulls
Pawan Kumar as we know now is the no.1 raider with the raid points of 271. But its was not a rosy journey for him to reach here. He started his career in Season 3 representing Bengaluru Bulls and ended up being the lead raider of his team but Season 4 was dull with a meager score of 11 points. The season 5 too was no good as he joined Gujarat Fortune giants and the score was again just 10 points. But Season 6 changed everything; he came back to Bengaluru Bulls and scored 13 super 10s just 2 less than Narwal making him the best raider of Season 6.
I personally believe Randhir Singh Shehrawat the head coach of Bengaluru Bulls played a vital role in turning around Pawan Kumar into a raider beast. Randhir Singh took the reign of Bengaluru Bulls in 2014 and made them the champions in season 6.
In season 7, this team looks solid and might defend their championship. They have 6 raiders, 10 defenders and 2 all-rounders which makes it a good mix of talent . Captain Rohit Kumar is an excellent raider and has very good leadership skills with an excellent strategy. He was awarded the most valuable player in Season 3. He is also on No. 4 in the list of players who have scored the most amount of Super 10s.
The defense of Bengaluru bulls is super strong with Mahendra Singh and Ashish Kumar at the forefront. They even have a mix of foreign blood in their team. Dong Ju Hong & Gyung Tae Kim both South Koreans and both being all-rounders can add spice to the entire lineup when needed.
So with a strong coach – Randhir, a capable captain – Rohit Kumar and a rock-solid team, I am sure Season 7 of pro kabaddi championship is going to be interesting for Bengaluru Bulls.
