The Bengaluru Bulls started the PKL with successive wins and remained unbeaten for the longest time. Its last five matches have seen the Bulls win two, lose two and tie one match. In fact, with just one victory in its last four matches, the Bengaluru Bulls cannot be feeling too good about themselves.
The reason for the immense success that the Bulls have enjoyed is its offense. Pawan Kumar Sehrawat, Rohit Kumar, and Kashiling Adake have been brilliant in this PKL and formed the most potent offense of any team.
One of these three seems to be on the mat at all times and so the opposition can never rest easy. With the best raid points average per game of 12.4 and the highest successful raid percentage, Pawan Kumar Sehrawat is the heart of this team.
He is 3rd in the race for best raider but we suspect he is going to keep rising as the tournament progresses. Rohit Kumar also has 63 points in his 11 matches while Kashiling Adake is becoming the Super raid specialist.
The only thing that the Bengaluru Bulls need to work on is to ensure they don’t make silly defensive mistakes like in the last match. Mahender Singh has been the best defender for the die but the others will also have to start chipping in.
The Tamil Thalaivas have struggled massively this season and that is down to an inability to score raid points. They have scored 22, 27, and 27 points in their last three matches. A total like that is not going to be enough against the Bengaluru Bulls.
This statistic is even stranger considering the fact that Ajay Thakur is third in the league for raid points scored. He started the season strongly but has since fallen off and we believe the Tamil Thalaivas are lacking some young raiders to provide him the assistance he needs.
For the Thalaivas to win, all-rounder Manjeet Chillar may have a more important role to play. Chillar has been the rock of the Tamil Thalaivas defense and played a very important part in securing victory against the Telugu Titans.
Can he stop the raiding trio of the Bengaluru Bulls, though?
The Bengaluru Bulls have dominated this southern rivalry 4-1 from 5 matches. The Bengaluru Bulls are favorites to extend that advantage even more after this match. Both sides are coming into this match with the exact same recent form but the difference in quality is quite apparent.
The Bengaluru Bulls have the offense to rip apart the Tamil Thalaivas. Their own defense may be suspect but the Thalaivas don’t seem to have the point scoring capability to take full advantage.
Back the Bengaluru Bulls to win.