The first southern derby of the Hyderabad leg of the RuPay Prime Volleyball League Powered by A23 Season 2 saw Bengaluru Torpedoes edging past Chennai Blitz 3-2 (15-11, 8-15, 15-10, 15-13, 10-15) in what was an absolute nerve-racking contest.
Chennai started off in fine fashion winning the first three points in style. Back-to-back spikes followed by a scintillating super serve, however, allowed Bengaluru Torpedoes to get back into the game.
Bengaluru continued to push for points and thanks to an unforced error by Renato Mendes, the team from Karnataka bagged the first set. Chennai, meanwhile, upped the ante in the second set, giving Bengaluru a sheer run for their money.
Chennai captain Naveen Jacob took the matter into his own hands towards the end of the set as he went on to smash consecutive super serves. The Pankaj Sharma-led team lost the plot in the next two sets and this is when Bengaluru took full advantage.
Chennai Blitz learned from their previous mistakes, almost!
It must be remembered that Chennai came into Thursday’s fixture on the back of a humiliating 0-5 loss against Mumbai Meteors. The match put all of Chennai’s frailties out in the open and the team did try to put everything back in place, but Bengaluru proved to be the better side.
Take the third set for instance. By the time the score was 8-8, Chennai put in a good shift. The team, however, failed miserably to defend Bengaluru’s attacks and in no time, the score went up to 14-9 in the latter’s favour.
Bengaluru Torpedoes will need a lot more to challenge
While Chennai may have come up short on the night, Bengaluru were no better. In fact, it is safe to say that they came out on top just because they had a better attack than their opposition’s.
To put things in perspective, Bengaluru scored 29 points from the attack as compared to 23 by Chennai. More importantly, if not for Ibin Jose and Tsvetelin Tsvetanov, the team would have struggled to get on top.
Everything was in Chennai’s favour… except the result
Surprisingly enough, despite losing the tie, Chennai Blitz tallied more points than Bengaluru. Looking at the statistics, Chennai gathered a total of 64 points across five sets as compared to Bengaluru’s 63. Furthermore, they also earned more points (26) from the opponent’s errors but lost the fixture.