Dabang Delhi go down against U Mumba in Vizag

The Eagles lost to U Mumba in an unevenly fought contest, 19-44. It was a night our Dabangs will look to forget as they still stand firm for a spot in the play-offs needing just one point in remaining two matches. 

Chief Coach, Krishan Kumar Hooda made as many as five changes to the playing seven. Shabeer Bappu was named captain for the night. The playing seven included Shabeer Bappu, Chandran Ranjit, Satpal Narwal, Vishal Lather, Anil Kumar, Meraj Sheykh and Tushar Bhoir. 

It wasn't a great start for us, but our boys had a few moments including the 2nd minute tackle of Siddharth Desai, which was his first raid of the match. Our defenders did give a tough fight in the first half with 7 tackle points as compared to U Mumba's 8 points. But, the story wasn't the same from our raiding department as they managed to score just four points in comparison to U Mumba’s 9. At the half-time mark, the score was 11-19 in favour of U Mumba.

Chandran Ranjit made a flying start to the second half for the Eagles. A Super Raid in the 21st minute of the match took us to 14-19 , the closest we managed to reach. From there it was an absolute carnage from U Mumba.

From 14-19 in no time it was 15-23, then 15-30, followed by 18-39 and at the full time it read 19-44, the Eagles were all over the place. We got all out twice in the match and lost the Vizag leg tie by a huge 25 points. A lot of questions would be asked regarding the changes but given that the team has performed so well during the home leg, the players deserved a rest along with testing the bench being important.

Satpal Narwal was a star performer for Dabang Delhi scoring 5 points including a Super Tackle. Chandran Ranjit and Captain Shabeer Bappu finished the match with five points each.

The match result made no difference to where Dabang Delhi stands at the points table in 3rd spot and will be playing Jaipur Pink Panther on 20th December in Panchkula.