Decoding the Raider: Ability to score effectively in the death

The game of Kabaddi has obviously given us those ‘wow moments’ where a raider has stolen the show, in the dying half of the game. Ajay Thakur’s heroics in the World Cup, would be the first recall to any Indian Kabaddi fan. This sentiment was so huge that he was made the captain for Tamil Thaliavas and the Indian team.

Season 7 of PKL also had such moments, Sandeep Narwal heroics to help Pune win a game with Haryana; Rohit being a thorn to UP and Patna defense in game 47 and 119; where he was the last man standing but did not let his team succumb to all-out.

Using stats guru, we took a deep diver to identify raiders who have displayed this skill: Ability to score effectively post 40+ raids in the game; when the team is trailing by 2 to 5 points

 

A raider who has good 

Points per Raid (PPR) and low percentage on Bench is the metric that quantifies this skill. A x-y plot of the same shows the following.

Sachin, Prapanjan the lead raiders from Gujarat were not very good in this situation, while Rohit and Pawan, who were really good in this situation.

On the other hand, Prasanth Kumar Rai was the best among the UP raiders in this situation, this coupled with his recent form in the nationals and local tournaments, might make sure he gets his worth.

Meeraj, is also an key asset in this situation, where he has won games with his super raids, so is Rishank and Maninder can get multi points but – their frequency to get out and be on the bench compared to top 5 (Pawan, Siddharth, Naveen, Prasanth and Rohit) makes them slightly risky candidates.

Data Alert: 

• Players who have played in more than 50% of the team games, been in the starting 7 in atleast 75% of games, and done more than 200 raids in the season were considered
• 40+ raids to the last raid of the games were only considered in this analysis
• Situations, where the team is trailing by 2 to 5 points are only considered