Champions announced for the 70th Maharashtra State Kabaddi Championship
The fourth and the final day of the grand tournament started with the semi-finals taking place for men’s and women’s categories. The first semi-final resulted in Ahmednagar(men’s), the home team defeating Nanded by 9 points as the defending champions made a grand entry into the finals. The first semi-final from the women’s category brought a huge victory of 21 points to Pune against Nandurbar. The second women’s semi-final turned out to be a one-sided affair with Mumbai Shahar destroying the Palghar Team with 28 points as it entered the finals.
However, the match that got everyone hooked onto their screens was the one that the two renowned rival teams from Mumbai fought out on the ground with Mumbai Shahar defeating Mumbai Upnagar in a close match by just 4 points. The semi-finals showed some huge positives as the promising young players such as Puja Yadav, Eshwari Kondhalkar, Akshay Suryavanshi, Aakash Gaikwad, Abhishek Nar amongst others.
The women’s finals proved the mettle of both the Pune as well as the Mumbai Shahar team as they went neck-to-neck throughout the match only for Pune to take the last piece of the pie with one point and become the Champions of the 70th Maharashtra State Level Championship on the back of Amrapali Galande’s stellar performance with 10 raid points, making her the performance spotlight from the women’s category.
However, it was the men’s finals that stole the show and owned the stage in every possible way as
the defending champions Ahmednagar and one of the most favourite teams the Mumbai Shahar
battled it out for the Championship Title. Giving the fans an absolute delight, a nail-biting match brought probably the best game of Kabaddi in the recent past. The match reached to a ‘TIE’ at the end of the time and got to the 5-5 raid which again ended up in ‘Tie’ and went onto to the ‘Golden Raid’ a rare phenomenon especially in the grand finals of such an prestigious tournament. The stellar performances of Shankar Gadai and Sushant Sail kept the suspense going. The final raid from the Pro Kabaddi League veteran Sushant Sai, however, sealed the deal for the Mumbai Shahar as they defeated the defending champions, the home team of Ahmednagar by 1 point in the Golden Raid and became the Champions of the biggest Kabaddi league from Maharashtra, the 70th Maharashtra State Level Championship.
Aakash Shinde from Nashik, Mahendra Rajput from Dhule, Aditya Shinde from Ahmednagar, Samruddhi Kolekar from Nandurbar, Amrapali Galande from Pune and Harshada Hungare from
Nandurbar emerged as the best raiders from the tournament. While Sanket Sawant from Mumbai Shahar, Harsh Lad from Mumbai Shahar, Umesh Mhatre from Thane and Eshwari Kondhalkar, Harshada Sonawane and Aditi Jadhav from Nandurbar and Shivrajani Patil from Sangli cemented their position as the best defenders from the tournament.
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