The Senior National Kabaddi Championship 2021 went underway in Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar International Stadium, Faizabad on 13th April 2021.  A total of 30 state and department teams from India are fighting it out for the championship in the state of Uttar Pradesh. The premier national Kabaddi tournament has always been an eye catchy tournament in the Indian Kabaddi ecosystem where the best of talent are seen action.

With all the league matches complete by the morning of day 3, 8 closely matched pre-quarters were in store. 

Pre-Quarters Rewind

Railways 30-15 Uttarakhand : Defending champions Railways' face off against Uttarakhand was a one-sided affair with champions lapping 30-15 to win comfortably. 

Chandigarh 45-27 Goa : Another one-sided affair with Chandigarh raiders Vijay and Guman Singh scoring at will inspite of Goa fielding right corner Nitesh Kumar as their captain. The dependence of Goa defense on Nitesh clearly exposed.

Karnataka 54-37 Delhi :  Game started neck to neck; Karnataka slowly edged ahead to lead by 5 points with scores at 16-11. Delhi fought back to take Karnataka into an All-out with scores 22-19 in Delhi's favor. Halfway into the match Delhi were leading at 24-21. Delhi however lost momentum in the 2nd half with Rathan K (the one-man army from Karnataka) scoring points at will. Karnataka eventually won the game comfortably with a final score of 54-37. Rathan scored 23 points in 28 raids. This is a huge win for Karnataka and they will face the winner of Bihar vs Rajasthan pre-quarters. 

Rajasthan 39-33 Bihar : This was the most tightly fought pre-quarters. Bihar started well taking Rajasthan into a near all-out; however last man standing Deepak Niwas Hooda took out 4 Bihar defenders to bring Rajasthan right back into the game. Deepak went on to score 16 points.

Services 56-24 Tamil Nadu :  Services raiders had no match in Tamil Nadu defense and scored as many as 30 points between Naveen Kumar, Manjeet and Arjun Deshwal.

Himachal Pradesh 43-23 Chattisgarh : HP is studded with star defenders Surinder Singh, Vishal Bharadwaj and Baldev Singh. Rahul Rana from HP scored 11 points to ensure HP easily confirms its quarter final berth. 

Maharashtra 37-7 Kerala : Star studded Maharashtra coasted to the quarters. Raiders Siddharth Desai, Pankaj Mohite and Rishank Devasiga came to the party and make it a one-sided affair. 

Uttar Pradesh 43-36 Haryana : In a shock defeat, star studded Haryana crashed out of the pre-quarters. Game started neck to neck with both Pardeep Narwal and Meetu raiding well. The match was filled with tense moments with crowd support fully for UP; on the other hand Pardeep continued doing what he best at : scoring multi-point raids. The half time score was 23-21 in favor of Haryana. In the second half Nitin Tomar and Abhishek upped the momentum in UP's favour. Haryana was however pushed into an all-out in the last minute and that just shifted the tide towards UP. In the end, it was a sour moment for Haryana.