PHL: Rajasthan Patriots end league stage with win over Maharashtra Ironmen

Rajasthan Patriots ended their league stage at the ongoing Premier Handball League (PHL) in style, defeating their semi-final opponents Maharashtra Ironmen 35-30 in a confident way, here on Thursday.

For the Patriots — the Krida Pvt Ltd own franchise, Manish Malik (8), Dmitrii Kireev (7) and Happy Singh (7) shone with the goals helping their team to their seventh victory of the season.

Manish Malik and Dmitrii Kireev walked away with the ‘Goal of The Match’ award and ‘Most Valuable Player’ award respectively.

Maharashtra Ironmen opened the scorecard in the first minute of the game and raced ahead with a scorecard, reading 3-0 by the 3rd minute. Soon after, Rajasthan Patriots answered back by scoring 5 unanswered goals started by their Russian attacker, Dmitrii Kireev and carried forward by Ahmad Al-Otabi as the scorecard read 5-3 in favour of the hosts at the 10th minute of the game.

Both sides were neck to neck by the midway point of the half as the score read 12-12. Patriots with the help of Happy Singh’s conversions took charge over Ironmen and ended the first half with a 2-goal lead, the scorecard reading 18-16.

Rajasthan Patriots continued their dominance and stretched their lead to 5 goals through Kireev’s powerful strikes with the scorecard reading 25-20 in 39th minute of the game.

The Patriots never looked behind from there and used the momentum in a rightful manner as the lead extended to 9 goals at the halfway mark of the second half with the scorecard reading 30-21 in favour of the Patriots.

However, Ironmen tried to come back in the game when they cut down the deficit to 5 goals but it was not enough as the Patriots outplayed them in every department to comfortably walk away with a victory with a scorecard reading 35-30 at the final whistle.-IANS