In a match where the wiry and supple Ajith Kumar scored 14 points for Tamil Thalaivas, the nine points of the hefty Siddharth Desai proved enough for his team Telugu Titans to register a decisive if somewhat tense win. This is the second consecutive loss for the Thalaivas as they had gone down against the home team Bengaluru Bulls the previous day.
Ajith, who had been impressive as a substitute in his team's losing effort against the Bulls, played as a frontline player in this match and starting scoring prolifically right from the beginning. With Ajay Thakur missing from the team, it was a golden opportunity for Ajith Kumar who was taking full advantage of it.
The contest in the first half was a close one as both teams remained close to each other. Manjeet Chillar, the captain of the Tamil team, was, as always, giving instructions to his raiders. Despite Rahul Chaudhari also scoring a couple of points towards the end of the first half against his former team, it ended in the favour of Titans 18-14.
The second half saw an intense contest. Ajith had two more successful raids early in the second half and Desai was tackled out as the lead of the Telugu team was down to just two points. But then, both the key raiders of Thalaivas, Chaudhari and Ajith got tackled out and the lead started extending again for Titans.
With 10 minutes remaining in the game, the score read 23-18. A do or die raid came around for Thalaivas and they decided to put their faith in, who else, Ajith. But this time he failed and got tackled out by his opponents. Another important moment was when Telugu team's raider Armaan eliminated the captain and ace defender of Thalaivas Manjeet Chillar.
The score was 25-18 and the Tamil side were down to just three on-mat players. However, the super tackle of Armaan and a successful raid by Shabeer Bapu reduced the points gap to just three points. But this is when the Titans started to assert themselves.
A poor attempt to tackle raider Vishal by defender Ran Singh of Thalaivas cost his team two points and the gap was back to five in favour of Telugu team. Shabeer then had another successful raid but then committed a blunder by trying to tackle the massive Desai on his own and got eliminated.
With five minutes to go, the score read 28-23. When another raid from Ajith, who was one point away from completing a super-10, failed and he got successfully tackled, Thalaivas were down to just two men and in danger of an all-out.
Siddharth took care of one of those two men in his raid and substitute Chaudhari failed to revive his team as an all-out was inflicted and the score became 33-24. The match was all but over. However, the Thalaivas weren't going to go down without a fight. Ajith completed his super-10 and got another two points in his next raid. But the gap was still seven points with less than three minutes to go in this Pro Kabaddi League match.
There was a successful tackle of Siddharth when he was lifted off his feat as without it, he would have barged his way through. Ajith then continued his golden form with two more good raids and the difference was down to just five points. But there was less than a minute remaining.
Eventually, Ajith ended up with 14 points but his team ended up on the losing side. The final score was 35-30.
