A former MVP and a two-time Best Defender Award winner, Tamil Thalaivas' Manjeet Chhillar is one of the greats of Pro Kabaddi and continues to be a solid player in the league.
Manjeet is the league's leading tackle point-scorer with 339 and is one of only two all-rounders to score over 200 raid points and 300 tackle points alongside U Mumba’s Sandeep Narwal.
The veteran has played with and against the best that PKL has had to offer and is a reliable authority on who the league's best players have been. So, when Manjeet picked his Pro Kabaddi Dream Team, it was bound to be a special unit filled to the brim with talent.
Manjeet picked himself to play as the Left Cover and here are his remaining six picks:
Cover – Surjeet Singh
With himself slotted in the Left Cover position, Manjeet opted for Surjeet Singh to partner him as the Right Cover in his team.
A stalwart of Indian kabaddi, Surjeet is one of the finest Cover defenders in the Pro Kabaddi league. The Puneri Paltan skipper is the highest-scoring Cover defender in league history and is also the only Cover defender to feature in the top 10 tackle point-scorers in PKL history (Manjeet Chhillar is also a Cover defender that is in the top 10 tackle point-scorers, however, he started and played a large chunk of his career as a Corner defender).
Corners – Ravinder Pahal and Joginder Narwal
For the two Corner slots, Manjeet picked Dabang Delhi duo Ravinder Pahal and Joginder Narwal.
Right Corner Pahal has been ever-present in the Pro Kabaddi League and is a former Best Defender Award winner, finishing as the league's leading tackle point-scorer in Season 2. The Hawk, as he is fondly known, has scored 326 tackle points in his Pro Kabaddi career, trailing only Manjeet, who leads the league with 339.
A terrific leader, a respected figure and a stellar Left Corner, Joginder Narwal may be in the twilight of his career as a player but still continues to be an extremely reliable defender in the toughest defensive position in kabaddi. Joginder has scored 173 tackle points in his PKL career, which ranks just outside the top 20 in league history.
Raiders – Vikash Kandola, Pawan Sehrawat and Pardeep Narwal
For the three raiding spots in the team, Manjeet picked Haryana Steelers' Vikash Kandola, Bengaluru Bulls' Pawan Sehrawat and Patna Pirates' Pardeep Narwal.
After two seasons of playing an excellent backup raider, Haryana Steelers promoted Vikash Kandola to lead the team’s raiding unit in Season 7 and the youngster did not disappoint, scoring 190 raid points in 20 matches, which included 11 Super 10s, the fourth-most in the league. Kandola is one of the rising stars in the PKL and it comes as little surprise that Manjeet picked up this wily raider to be the third-choice in his team.
In Sehrawat and Narwal, Manjeet picked two raiders that have scored a combined 1842 raid points, 90 Super 10s, 79 Super Raids and won three best Raider Awards, three MVPs and four PKL titles.
The duo are by far the two best and most accomplished raiders in PKL history and it truly was a no-brainer for Manjeet to pick them in his Dream Team.
Feature image courtesy: ProKabaddi.com
