Haryana Steelers Pro Kabaddi Season 7 Team Analysis

The Pro Kabaddi Auction ahead of Season 7 was a highly anticipated affair with several teams looking to put together the remaining pieces of the jigsaw puzzle but also others looking to hit the reset button as they move forward with a completely new unit filled with new personnel. The auction wasn’t short of the star quotient either, with the likes of Monu Goyat, Rahul Chaudhari, Abozar Mighani, Sandeep Narwal, Nitin Tomar, Rishank Devadiga and Siddharth Desai all up for grabs!

There are positives and negatives when it comes to re-booting a side completely in an auction that has 12 teams vying for top players. On one hand, the purse available is significantly larger (teams like Puneri Paltan, Telugu Titans & UP Yodha had this luxury) than several other sides that have retained their core and that gives the team owners the ability to bully the auction a little and raise the price of players which competing owners definitely want back in their squads. On the other hand however, with 11 other teams vying for each player, the chances of putting together a balanced side from scratch become harder than when it was in an 8-team league and each team’s strategy tables have gotten smarter too with every passing auction.

Time to jump straight into our analysis of each team ahead of this Pro Kabaddi Season 7 and give you a detailed breakdown of the side with the strengths and potential gaps, which need to be addressed before July arrives. We at Kabaddi Adda have decided to detail each squad with a SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats) to understand where they currently stand but also to give all Kabaddi fans an idea of where these teams could find room to improve as the season kicks off…and we certainly expect a few surprises too!

Let’s start with the Haryana Steelers who struggled last season with the early injury to Surender Nada and also an out of form Monu Goyat. They ended the season with just 6 wins and 42 points from their 22 matches and came into the auctions looking to refresh their side given the pedigree that the owners, JSW Group has in the world of Indian sport.

The best buy of the auction for the Steelers and one of the most sought after names was that of Prashant Kumar Rai

They retained their young star Vikash Khandola along with very cheap but crucial retentions defensively, in their left-corner Kuldeep, right-corner Sunil and cover defender, Parveen.

A look at their new squad post the auctions will tell you that they have been extremely smart at the auction and learnt from their errors of the previous PKL Auction where they spent 1.51cr on one man, Monu Goyat. The additions of Vikas Kale, Ravi Kumar and most importantly Dharmaraj “Anna” Cheralathan, give the defensive unit plenty of experience and gives them a leader, which they desperately lacked in PKL 6 quite often.

Perhaps the best buy of the auction for the Steelers and one of the most sought after names was that of Prashant Rai (who was with UP Yodha in PKL6), who now joins Vikash Khandola to form a potent duo with the addition of Selvmani, who has been in good form in the Kabaddi Senior Nationals, and the buy-back of Naveen which gives them a formidable raiding attack.