Kochi Blue Spikers stunned Mumbai Meteors in their final league stage game of the RuPay Prime Volleyball League Powered by A23 Season 2. Thanks to a brilliant offensive display, the Spikers won 4-1 (15-14, 15-11, 15-12, 12-15, 15-10).

After a neck-to-neck start to the contest, Kochi raced to win the opening set which ended Mumbai’s hopes to qualify for the semi-final. Kochi went on to build on the winning momentum and seeing Mumbai down and out so early in the match, they bagged the first three sets in absolute style.

Now, Mumbai did get a consolation prize, winning a solitary set during the game, but that was the only positive they could get from the match.

Perfect way to finish the season

Kochi Blue Spikers knew they had nothing to lose. On the contrary, Mumbai Meteors had no margin for error. So when the Vipul Kumar-led side bagged the first set, Mumbai’s confidence went downhill.

By the end of the second set, Kochi’s attack was flying high so much so that they had 19 successful spikes as compared to Mumbai’s 11. And despite making more errors than their opponents, they led the game by a considerable margin. Once Kochi bagged the third set, the match became nothing but a dead rubber.

Mumbai far from convincing

For a team that was coming on the back of a 4-1 win over Hyderabad Black Hawks, a performance such as this was disappointing. Mumbai Meteors were far from convincing both in defence and offence, which gave Kochi more reasons to be dominant.

Interestingly enough, Kochi somehow managed to negate the efficiency of a certain Amit Gulia early on and that, in a way, made Mumbai more reliant on Hiroshi Centelles. Once that was done, it was a cakewalk for Kochi.

Where was this Kochi all along?

It’s hard to believe that the Kochi team that took the court tonight took five matches to win their first this season. Against Mumbai, the Spikers did not rely much on unforced errors. In fact, such was their dominance on the night that in the third set, they overcame a three-point margin, going from being 5-8 down to winning the set 15-12.

The story was almost similar in the fourth set. After trailing for the most part of the round, they went from 4-8 down to 11-11 in no time. This begs to raise the point that if Kochi had this kind of confidence early in the tournament, their position in the league table would have been different.