Bengal Warriors scored their third victory in four outings at home to leap to the top of the points table with 26 points by beating Jaipur Pink Panthers 34-20 in a Pro Kabaddi League contest here on Wednesday.
The Panthers looked clueless on the day in the absence of their star raider Jasvir Singh who is nursing an injury. The losers remain in fifth place with 11 points in five matches with two wins.
However, the credit for the Warriors' win should go to star raider Nitin Tomar who is growing in stature with every match. He had a match tally of 9 raid points with one tackle point.
As usual, the Kolkata defence of Girish Ernak, Bajirao Hodage and captain Nilesh Shinde played an important role to negate the threat of the lanky Sonu Narwal who is short of form this season. His final tally of 7 raid points swelled because he was given easy bonus points by the rivals towards the end.
Ernak who changed over from Patna Pirates this time is fast becoming a good left corner for the hosts.
The tempo of the match never rose beyond the pedestrian pace in the first half as Warriors led 10-9 at the break.
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Sonu had a couple of fruitful raids and so did Nitin. There was nothing worth of note even in the second half but for two all-outs scored by the winners and a super raid by Jang Kun Lee that fetched three points to take the score to 32-16.
Panthers' Rajesh Narwal who strove hard got a super tackle on substitute Shyam Kumar Sah in the last minute of play.