Puneri Paltan

Representing the city of Pune, Maharashtra and coached by Anup Kumar, Puneri Paltan is one of the founding teams of the Pro Kabaddi League. While the team has qualified in the playoffs a number of times, its consistency has resulted in the team being unable to achieve success and the league title till date.

Moreover, with the skills and leadership experience of Fazel Atrachali, Paltan will surely be looking to make history and change their fortune by capturing the elusive PKL trophy for the ninth season, 2022.

Puneri Paltan History

Puneri Paltan team have played in all the seasons of PKL and have only managed 3 playoff qualifications and no PKL title. They faced defeat against Patna Pirates in 3 consecutive seasons 2016, January 2016, July and 2017.

Despite having a dream team, their inconsistency has made them lag behind. Puneri Paltan Coach, Anup Kumar has worked hard as a player turned coach to fix the various leaks of his team players and harnessing their talent to the field.

Defender Surjeet Singh, has been the Puneri Paltan Captain for the 7th consecutive season of the PKL till 2019. However, with the release of Nitin Tomal, the Paltans have secured Atrachali as their leader. It will be interesting to see if Atrachali is able to make use of coach Anup Kumar’s experience and teams’ skills. 

Puneri Paltan Owners

Puneri Paltan Owners- Puneri Paltan Team owners are a firm called Insurekot Sports founded in 2001. Sumanlal Babulal Shah, Rajesh Harkishandas Doshi, and Karthik Kumar Venkataraman Marshan are the 3 directors of the firm who also hold reputable positions at other big companies. Talking about Puneri Paltan Owners, Uday Kotak and his family own this franchise. 

Puneri Paltan Stats

Puneri Paltan Stats are as follows:

Puneri Paltan PKL 9 Match Schedule

The first match of the Puneri Paltan Team is on 22nd July in Haryana against Haryana Steelers.

Puneri Paltan Team PKL 9 Players

Puneri Paltan is a kabaddi team that plays in the Pro Kabaddi League since 2014. The Puneri Paltan Team is a Mumbai-based firm representing the city of Pune, Maharashtra. The home ground of Puneri Paltan is located in Shree Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex, Balewadi, Pune.

They hold the badge of being one of the founding members of Pro Kabaddi League but unfortunately, the Puneri Paltan Team had a relatively low success rate after finishing at the base of the table for the first 2 seasons- 2014, 2015.

But with the release of Nitin Toman, Puneri Paltan gained a phenomenal leader and one of the best corner defenders in the league. Moreover, the management has retained their youth brigade which consists of experienced players like Mohit Goyat, Sanket Sawant, Aslam Inamdar, Pankaj Mohite, Shubham Shelke and Sombir Gulia.

It remains to be seen how the coach Anup Kumar utilises the talent of Paltans. That said, let’s take a look at the List of Puneri Paltan players are as follows:

Best Players of Puneri Paltan

The Puneri Paltan Players to look out for are:

Pankaj Mohite

With 132 raid points scored in 23 matches at an average of 5.74 raids per match. Mohite has emerged to be one of the best performers for Puneri Paltan.

Mohit Goyat

Mohit Goyat continues to remain a countable raider for the Pune team with his 159 raid points,2 super raids and 8 super 10s in 21 matches. It will be interesting to see if his performance can help the team achieve its first PKL trophy.

Aslam Inamdar

Aslam Inamdar was retained by the Paltans for setting the mat ablaze with his stellar performance. His score of 169 raid points in 23 matches with an average of 7.35 makes him one of the best raiders for the Paltans.

Fazel Atrachali

The newly signed and one of the best corner defenders in their ranks, Atrachali has earned 372 points in 125 matches, with 368 of them coming as a defender. Moreover, he has also scored 23 High 5s in his career so far which speaks volume about him as a leader, who is able to shoulder the team in tackle during the tough times.

Sombir

The seasoned player for Pune, Sombir has scored 107 tackle points, 14 super tackles and 8 High 5s in 54 matches played in the league so far. 

Mohammad Nabibaks

It was the all-round performance of Nabibaksh, which led Puneri Paltans to purchase him. With 49 tackle points and 181 raid points in a total 43 matches played till date, Nabibaksh is certainly an optimum choice of all-rounder. However, only time will tell how beneficial this purchase will prove for the Paltans.

Puneri Paltan Strengths & Weaknesses

Strength of Puneri Paltan Team

The inclusion of Fazal Atrachali along with the allrounder Mohammad Esmaeil Nabibaksh is bound to exponentially increase the chances of the team's win in the league. Moreover, their inclusion in the team also strengthens the defence and the team line-up respectively.

Additionally, Nabibaksh also forms a deadly raiding trio with Mohit Goyat and Aslam Inamdar in the form of experience and youth. This will certainly prove beneficial for the Paltan to serve as a rightful answer to any defence of the opponents.

Weakness of Puneri Paltan Team

One of the major weakness for Pune is the unavailability of raiding backup apart from Pankaj Mohite as other raiders are unproven or not upto the level of posing challenge at this moment.

Moreover, the Paltans can face a huge problem if the defence combination of Sombir or Fazel won’t work. The team certainly needs to create more backup on both fronts to ensure a smooth journey to playoffs or the league title.

Puneri Paltan PKL Records

The Record of the Puneri Paltan players and the Puneri Paltan Team is as follows:

• 2014-they managed just 2 wins out of the 14 games against Bengaluru Bulls and Bengal Warriors, respectively. The point difference that season was -127.
• 2015- Puneri Paltan team lost 11 games, and their state was not very different from 2014.
• 2016 Jan- they qualified for the playoffs for the first time and finished in 3rd place. The credit of 3rd place goes to the trio of Manjeet, Surjeet Singh and Jasmer Gulia.
• 2016 Jul- although both U Mumba and Paltans had 42 points, Puneri Paltan players qualified for the semi-finals due to their higher point difference. They again finished in 3rd place after facing a defeat from Patna in the semi-finals.
• 2017- Puneri Paltans team won 15 games and managed 2nd position in Zone A with 80 points. The team won eliminator 1 against UP but lost to Patna in eliminator 3 and finished 4th in the overall standings.
• 2018- Puneri Paltan Team failed to make it to the playoffs finishing 4th in Zone A and 6th overall. They won only 8 matches out of 22. Girish Ernak was their best defender with 56 points.
• 2019 - Vs another year of disappointing performance, and they finished 9th overall.
• 2021
  • Mohit Goyat scored 49 player DOD raid points for the Pune team and the team scored the most DOD raid points by a team (102).
  • Puneri Paltan scored the third highest successful tackles and tackle points (253) in the last season. They also have the second highest successful tackles per match (10.04) and the team average tackle points (11.00).
  • Moreover, they also have the fourth highest team average points (35.39) scored in the season 8 of PKL.

Puneri Paltan FAQ’s