Ahmedabad: If it’s the final of the Kabaddi World Cup between India and Iran, there’s going to be only one winner — India. On Sunday, at the StadiaArena, that proved to be the case again as India found their colossus in ‘Super’ Raider Ajay Thakur who was instrumental in the hosts retaining the trophy with a convincing margin of 38-29.
Ask any current member of the Iranian kabaddi World Cup squad about the one team they so badly wanted to beat when the tournament started, and they would have replied in unison that it was India.
And what better occasion to pick than the final with the glittering trophy at stake. After two years of excruciating wait when they lost a last minute thriller to India, in the Asian Games final, Iran painfully swallowed their pride at the prospect of the wait getting extended.
But the final was all about Ajay who scored 17 raid points and also about the solidity lent in defence by the watchful Surjeet and Sandeep Narwal.
Rahul Chaudhari, called the poster boy of Indian Kabaddi, failed to make his presence felt. The occasion must have got to him! The usually reliable raider Pardeep Narwal, too, had a forgettable outing, but Nitin Tomar won a few crucial points in raiding when he was employed as an impact substitute.
Iran looked the better team and were in the ascendancy at half-time when they were ahead 18-13. Their robust defence led by Fazel Atrachali crumbled like a pack of cards in the second-half under the relentless attack by Thakur. The more the pressure, the better he got and captain Anup Kumar’s calming presence in the face of mounting odds also tilted scales in the host’s favour.
