After the victory over U Mumba in the previous match, U.P. Yoddha finished their final match of the Mumbai leg with a tie against Telugu Titans - thus remaining unbeaten in Mumbai. The close-knit contest remained on par in both the halves, 11-all in the first and 20-all in the second. After the match, Yoddha now have eight points in season seven

Yoddha headed to the court with an unchanged team, keeping their winning combination intact. Winning the toss, they opted for the choice of court, and the match started with Siddharth Desai’s raid. With Monu’s touchpoint to get Farhad Milaghardan out, UP Yoddha got off the mark in the game. While Siddharth Desai won the initial battle with Nitesh, our raiders consistently earned us points to keep the balance.

The defenders, after a not-so-impressive start, eventually decoded Siddharth. Ashu Singh got rid of the raider with a powerful dash and kept the team afloat. Our raiders deployed a strategy to wait for the do-or-die raids and successfully earned points each time.

As the saying goes, better late than never, our defenders pulled their socks up and got their usual rhythm back. They tackled the Desai brothers more than once and put the Titans under pressure. However, TT soon upped their game and kept pinning our raiders down, taking the lead.

Our defenders came to the rescue, yet again. With two minutes remaining in the first half, Amit pulled off an ankle hold to single-handedly hold Suraj Desai back, earning Yoddha a couple of points for the super-tackle. Shrikant Jadhav followed it up with a tackle, as well as a raid point to level scores as both teams went off the mat with 11 points each..

While Sumit fell prey to Siddharth’s subtle toe touches earlier, he tamed the Titans raider in the second half. Both teams put up a neck-and-neck fight and the lead barely exceded beyond a solitary point. With Siddharth out of the mat, Titans sent Rajnish to raid, whom Nitesh got out with a double-thigh hold.

We kept Siddharth away from scoring in the second half till he got rid of Sumit in the 27th minute. The pressure got onto the Yoddha, eventually being reduced to only Amit, Ashu and Nitesh on the mat. However, they bounced back on Siddharth’s do-or-die raid, pulling off a super-tackle and drawing level yet again.

With three minutes left and scores tied at 18-all, Yoddha got Sachin as a replacement for Sumit in the left corner and he inflicted a tackle immediately, taking down Rajnish. However, Shrikant failed to make an impact in the next do-or-die raid, and the scores became even again - 19 apiece.

With 45 seconds to go, UP Yoddha went for the strategy to push Titans for a last do-or-die raid. In the last raid, Sumit stepped out, giving the opponents the winning points. However, there was a twist in the tale. Titans stepped on to the mat before the final whistle, gifting a technical point to us. The match thus ended in a 20-all tie.

Amit and Nitesh were the top defenders in today’s clash, with four points each while Shrikant, with four raid points, was the most successful Yoddha raider.