A Look Back At The 50th Kabaddi Junior Nationals
The 50th Kabaddi Junior Nationals were held in Uttarakhand in January earlier this year, and the event delivered yet again. We saw the brightest young talents in the nation battling it out on the mat in the quest for ultimate glory, and Haryana were the ones to emerge victorious in the end. They put in a dominant performance against Uttarakhand in the final, but their players weren’t the only ones to put on a show at the grand event. Here, we take a look back at the knockout stage of the nationals to highlight the teams and players who made their mark on the competition.
The champions, Haryana, were the best raiding team of the knockout stages, with an impressive 43.7% success rate. SAI were the only other team to hit the 40% mark, with the rest of the competition being way behind these two.
Losing finalists, Uttarakhand were surprisingly the worst raiding team among the eight, with a success rate of just 20.8%. They fared slightly better in critical moments, with a do-or-die raid success rate of 41.4%, but it wasn’t good enough to crack the top five.
Rajasthan failed to make the top 5 for raid success rate, but they performed exceptionally well in do-or-die situations with a 59.1% success rate. Tamil Nadu managed to outperform them here, but there was another category where the Rajasthanis came out on top.
Rajasthan just about managed to pip Haryana for the top spot, with a 51.8% tackle success rate. The champions were the only team to make the top 4 here and for raid success rate, which explains why they were the ones who hoisted the trophy.
As for the team they beat in the final, Uttarakhand did far better on defense than offense, with a 48.8% tackle success rate. Had their attack performed this well, too, perhaps they would have been the ones emerging victorious.
On the other end of the spectrum on defense, Andhra Pradesh struggled the most with a 19.2% success rate, while Uttar Pradesh weren’t much better at 20.6%. They didn’t fare much better in do-or-die situations either, failing to crack the top 5.
The top 3 remained the same for both overall tackle success rate and do-or-die tackle success rate, albeit in a different order. There is no denying that Uttarakhand, Haryana, and Rajasthan were easily the best defensive teams in the knockouts, and the fact that all 3 made the semifinals shows the value of having a strong defense.
We now shift our focus to the individuals, and when it came to raiding, UP’s Shivam Choudhary certainly caught the eye. He had the best raid success rate among players who attempted at least 10 raids in the knockouts.
Haryana were the only team to have two players in the top 5, which once again shows why they were the cream of the crop. The duo of Ankit and Rahul Jaglan were the only players, along with Chaudhary, to attempt at least 10 raids and have a success rate of over 50%.
On the defensive end, meanwhile, it was Rajasthan’s Mukesh Kumar who had the best tackle success rate among defenders who attempted more than 5 tackles.
SAI were the ones to have two of their players make it to the top 5 in Ritik and Hitesh. Uttarakhand, meanwhile, had the only other player to hit the 70% mark in Harbir Singh.
Despite having Ritik and Hitesh on defense and Nitin on attack, though, SAI were not able to defend their title, losing to the eventual champions Haryana in the semifinal. They’d be keen for revenge but will have to wait a while to get it.
We’ll also be waiting and watching to see if some of the stars from this tournament go on to make it big at the professional level. They’re clearly extremely talented, but we know that talent alone isn’t good enough to get to the top.
