The Franchisee to be with – Puneri Paltan

Puneri Paltan began their Pro Kabaddi ride with the war cry ‘Gheun Tak’ and strived hard to excel in the first two seasons of the League. With two 8^th place finishes in the first two seasons, we pulled up our socks and have been the most consistent side along with the Pirates in Season 3 and 4, finishing third both the times, albeit with completely different squads.

Along the way it seems to have become a talk of the player fraternity that we are the team to be a part of. A look at the Season 5 auction reveals how all franchisees also believe that players who are at Puneri Paltans ARE the most valuable players to go after.

Although, Season 4 was not easy on Puneri Paltans – facing injuries to 3 top players during the deciding half of the season – Former Captain Manjeet Chillar, Nitin Tomar and Ravinder Pahal.

In spite of these misfortunes, we managed to edge out rival U Mumba for a place in the semi finals and finished the season with a second successive 3^rd place finish.

With the purse doubling to 4 crores; player salaries have also doubled on an average. But Puneri players have cashed in – with their salaries growing  2.8 times*. This meant that Pune could only retain Deepak Niwas Hooda; all other players got tremendous raise in value and were bought by 6 other teams. The highest priced players in UP (Nitin Tomar), JP (Manjeet Chillar), TN (Ajay Thakur) were Paltans from Season4.

 

Player	S4 Salary	S5 Salary	New Team	Increase
Nitin Tomar*	18	93	UP	417%
Manjeet Chhillar	27	75.5	JP	180%
Deepak Niwas Hooda	22	72.6	PU	230%
Ajay Thakur	19	69.3	TN	265%
Ravinder Pahal	17	50	BB	194%
Somvir Shekhar	16.6	40.5	JP	144%
Joginder Singh Narwal	28	32	UM	14%
Sonu Narwal	12.5	21	HR	68%
Khomsan Thongkham	5.4	20.4	HR	278%
Parmod Narwal	5	11.4	HR	128%
Preetam Chhillar	7.6	9.2	BB	21%

 

* Services player

Unluckily for us, we alone have to pay the price for this disproportionate value we add to our team, by not being able to buy back any of our previous team members. However we wish all our players from season 4 all the very best in Season 5 and we hope to continue to maintain our constant value addition to everyone on our team.