PKL Season 8 Auction Series: Dabang Delhi ride on experience of senior players going into this season
– Saiprasad Kagne
Dabang Delhi, runner-up of PKL 7 fell short of the final hurdle and seemed more dependent on their star raider Naveen Kumar. But, now looks like they are well prepared for upcoming season post this auction.
In this article, we will have a look at their auction buys in each department i.e. Raiders , Defenders and All-rounders through an analysis.
Dabang Delhi bought only 3 raiders in their squad this season. Sushant Sail (10 lakhs), Emad Sedaghat Nia (10.20 lakhs) both close to the base price will benefit them as an options for 2nd or 3rd raider. Ajay Thakur (46 lakhs), a quality player in history of PKL will definitely share his experience in the progress of the team. Along with Naveen Kumar as retained young player and Neeraj Narwal as retained existing new young player will again have plenty of opportunities to play to their potential and hopefully cross that final hurdle this season.
On the other hand, this team seems like full of experienced leaders who have been quality players in their prime. However, most of them are in the fag end of their careers. Thus, in terms of fitness and availability throughout tournament like PKL will be quite challenging for these experienced players.
Here, we can see that they have couple of quality and well experienced defenders into their team. They got all the defenders at their base price except Jeeva Kumar due to his huge experience and ability to play right and left cover. But lack of good backups in defense will create pressure on frontline players to perform well thus they can’t afford injury to any player.
Again, well experienced all-rounders like Sandeep Narwal (60 lakhs) and Manjeet Chillar (20 lakhs) are part of the squad which is a big plus. Along with Vijay an elite retained player and Balram as an existing new young player will provided good quality players in all-rounders department. But still, lot of experienced players in this squad may create a clash of leadership in the upcoming season.