Volleyball
Kolkata Thunderbolts rampage to 4-1 win to go atop PVL points table
Prime Volleyball League: Kolkata Thunderbolts have climbed to the top of the table with a commanding win over the Hyderabad Black Hawks.
Vinit Kumar in action for Kolkata Thunderbolts (PVL)
Defending champions Kolkata Thunderbolts put up a commanding display of skill, strength, versatility and mental composure to pull off a 4-1 win against Hyderabad Black Hawks on Wednesday.
This win, their second in a row, takes the Thunderbolts to the top of the Prime Volleyball League (PVL) points table with 4 points with 2 matches played.
The match began on an even note as Hyderabad's Guru Prasanth kept standing like a wall, but the Thunderbolts got into the lead late in the first set as the power and resilience of Ashwal Rai and Vinit Kumar started showing through.
Speaking after the match, Guru told The Bridge, "We were vulnerable in receiving and in defence today. Hyderabad have always been a blocking team, but today it just did not come off. This is just one game, we need to go back to the drawing board to fix these errors."
In the second and third sets, the Thunderbolts had a walk in the park, as the dangerous Cody Caldwell kept darting around the court and Deepesh Sinha sent in some super smashes to continue Kolkata's dominance.
With the win sealed at 3-0, the Thunderbolts now began their quest for the bonus point with a 5-0 win. In the fourth set, Hyderabad got into the lead for the first time in the match but lost out in the end as Kolkata won 15-12 to go 4-0 up.
In the fifth set, there was a drop of intensity from Kolkata as Hyderabad clinched a consolation point as the match ended 4-1.
It was a lesson in volleyball the Kolkata Thunderbolts dished out as last year's semifinalists - the Black Hawks - got an early wake-up call in the season with a defeat that seriously hurts their count on the sets-won lost column in the points table. Troublingly for them, their defence was exposed once the Thunderbolts marked out Guru Prasanth as the danger man.
Player of the Match Vinit Kumar told The Bridge, "Our team combination is working out perfectly, that's how we are playing like a well-oiled machine. The new players this season initially took time to fit into our system, but as you saw from Deepesh Sinha today, we have gelled well during the training camp."
