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Puneri Paltan buying the right balance for full-on title push at season 7
Puneri Paltan pick 16 players at season 7 kabaddi league auction in Mumbai
Releasing all the players from the team before the auctions and bringing in Anup Kumar as the head coach — these were the two surprising decisions of Puneri Paltan before the auction of Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) Season 7, which concluded in Mumbai on Tuesday.
In the two-day auction, Pune franchisee bought 16 players — seven are defenders, five raiders and four all-rounders.
Kailash Kandpal, chief executive officer (CEO) of Puneri Paltan, explains the team’s judgement to release all players and bring in Anup Kumar as coach.
Are you happy with the auctions?
I am absolutely happy with the auctions. We have got a very balanced team. The team has a good number of defenders and raiders. A balanced team will also give us a good quality on the bench. The franchise along with Anup gave considerable thought before selecting the players.
From auctions, the team had to take 18 players, but took only 16. Any specific reason?
Apart from the 16 players, we can take any two domestic players from the talent hunt camp of Puneri Paltan and these players were selected by our mentor Ashok Shinde.
The players which we have selected are — Pankaj Mohite, Sushant Sahil both have played for Maharashtra in Khelo India National Games, while the third one is Sanket Sawant. These players will give a variety to our squad.
Amit Kumar, Shubham Shinde and Sandeep Bholu are retained under new young retained players category from last year.These players has two years contract with franchisee
What were your thoughts behind bringing Anup Kumar as the head coach?
Anup Kumar has a lot of experience in the Pro Kabaddi League format. He understands the format very clearly. With all the teams which will be competing in the Pro Kabaddi League, will have 2-3 star players and to get best out of them and manage other players around them requires a skill, which Anup has in him. The best part is that he communicates very well with the youngsters.
Nitin Tomar has entered third time in Pune team. His performance in the previous two seasons for the team was a mixed bag. Your view on the same?
Tomar is a very good player and due to injuries, he couldn’t perform well in the last season. We have faith in him and his versatility will help our team. During the auction, we had also thought of taking Siddharth Desai, but since we had Final Bid Match (FBM) card and we wanted a raider who can guide a unit, we opted for Tomar. Anup also has very high regards for him and he also wanted one of the senior raiders in the team.
Why wasn’t Girish Ernak not retained earlier?
Girish is one of the best defenders, no doubt about it, but as we wanted a completely new team, we had not retained him. Once we got a few players ,we thought of getting Girish Ernak to add balance to our team.
What are your views on bringing in two Iranians to the squad?
Iranian players have a very different style of play which will help our Indian players during the match. Since taking two foreign players was compulsory, we decided to go with Iran players as they will be able to feature in the first seven.
