A stellar raider known for his incredible agility and miraculous escapes, Nitin Tomar has been a brilliant raider in the Pro Kabaddi league (PKL).
With 467 raid points, Tomar is among the top 20 points scorers in league history and has played with and against the best PKL has to offer. So, a player of his experience would be expected to pick a stellar Dream Team and he did just that on an Instagram live chat on the PKL handle.
Having picked himself in the lineup, here are the other six players Tomar chose for his side:
Corners – Fazel Atrachali and Nitesh Kumar
For the Corner slots, Tomar chose PKL Season 6 and Season 7's highest tackle point scorers, U.P. Yoddha's Nitesh Kumar and U Mumba's Fazel Atrachali.
Nitesh has been a revelation at the Right Corner spot since his debut in Season 5 and has redefined the way the position is played in PKL. He scored an incredible 100 tackle points in PKL Season 6, the only defender to hit triple figures for tackle points in a single season. He followed his incredible season with another outstanding one, scoring 75 tackle points, the most by a Right Corner in Season 7.
Few players have a CV comparable to the great Fazel Atrachali. The Iranian won the Best Defender award in Season 7, becoming only the second man after Manjeet Chhillar to win the award twice. He also became only the third defender to score 300 tackle points and climbed to third on the list of the league’s all-time leading tackle point scorers in PKL history, behind Manjeet and Ravinder Pahal.
Covers – Manjeet Chhillar and Surjeet Singh
The aforementioned Manjeet Chhillar found a spot on Tomar's Dream Team alongside Surjeet Singh.
The veteran has enjoyed a Hall of Fame career in the PKL, winning the Best Defender twice and the MVP award in Season 2. Manjeet is PKL all-time leading tackle point scorer with 339 and has scored over 500 points in his PKL career.
Surjeet Singh is perhaps the best Right Cover defender in the history of the PKL. With 278 tackle points, Surjeet is one of only two Cover defenders to feature in the top 15 tackle points scorers in PKL history, alongside veteran Jeeva Kumar. Surjeet is the only Cover defender to score atleast 50 tackle points in each of the last three PKL campaigns.
Raiders – Pardeep Narwal and Pawan Sehrawat
It barely comes as a surprise that Tomar chose Patna Pirates' Pardeep Narwal and Bengaluru Bulls' Pawan Sehrawat as the two raiders in his team.
Narwal, the league’s all-time leading points scorer, holds almost every scoring record there is in PKL. A two-time league MVP and a two-time Best Raider award winner, Pardeep led Patna Pirates to an unprecedented hat-trick of titles between Season 3 to Season 5 and holds the record for most points in a single season with 369, which he achieved in his magical Season 5 campaign.
With Rahul Chaudhari quickly fading into oblivion, Pardeep was seemingly untouched at the top of the kabaddi throne, but in Season 6, a new challenger emerged in Bengaluru Bulls' Pawan Sehrawat.
The mercurial raider led the Bulls to their maiden title in Season 6 and was named the league MVP for his incredible campaign. He followed that up by elevating it a notch higher in Season 7, scoring 360 points, second-most to Pardeep's 369 in Season 5. He broke the record for most points in a game, scoring 39 against Haryana Steelers, surpassing the previous mark of 34 set by Pardeep in Season 5.
Feature image courtesy: ProKabaddi.com
