Pro kabaddi Season 8 Review: The sinking ship - A season to forget for the Titans

Pro Kabaddi season 8 started with a fresh approach for the Telugu Titans. They had one of the youngest coaches in their history in the form of Jagdish Kamble. 

They built a team around young players, this time around. Rakesh Gowda (Raider), Ankit Beniwal (All-rounder), and Rajnish (Raiders) were retained at the start of the auction and the management went in to bring in their old Guards in the form of Siddarth Desai in raiding and Sandeep Kandola in defense. 

With this new approach, they hoped to finally turn around their fortunes for good. Since the start, Titans has always been a mid-table team but, last season was a disaster for them finishing 11th out of the 12 teams. A repeat of it would mean the team declining further from its mid-table hold.

They kicked off their campaign against their southern rival Tamil Thalivas. The match was a roller coaster ride for both the teams but Siddarth and Kandola showed why the management paid the big bucks to bring them in. They both excelled and helped their team finish with a high-scoring draw. 

But luck seemed to evade this reunion as Desai got injured in his 3rd game. It was a big loss for the team, with fears already starting to rise within the camp.

In the next 3 games, Titans showed some encouraging performances and were being a tough opponent to crack open. They pushed both Dabangs and pirates to the limit and lost by a single digit and a draw against the high-flying bulls. 

Their luckless faith continued as a devastating loss against giants made sure they remain winless for the continued period.
They had to wait till the 11th game of the season to register their first win. Which too was a close one with young Adarsh finally steering the first one home with his Super raids.

But this was it, they managed just one win in their entire campaign finishing last with 17 losses out of 22 games during the Pro Kabaddi season 8. The early loss of Siddarth prompted titans to try various combinations upfront with Ankit and Gowda trying to take the mantle up.

Rajnish finally came out as the winner of leading the raiding chart and did well scoring 106 points at an average of 8 points per game. But he was an alone warrior just, like Kandola at the back. 

The lack of cohesion and support in both offensive and defensive departments was pretty visible to the naked eyes. The inexperience showed with titans dropping points from winning position game after game. It resulted in yet another disastrous campaign with their lowest finish ever.