After an exciting fare on Tuesday, when all the three matches went to five sets, the first two matches in the Indian Volley League's Yanam leg on Wednesday were tame affairs.
Chennai Spikers beat Kerala Killers 25-21, 25-18, 25-14 in 59 minutes and Hyderabad Chargers defeated Yanam Tigers 25-12, 25-19, 25-23 in one hour. Karnataka Bulls, on the road to recovery, beat Maratha Warriors 25-20, 25-22, 25-17.
With this win, Spikers not only retained its top position in this leg, with eight points, but also on the overall points table with 24.
Chargers is second ahead of Bulls thanks to its better score quotient and set quotients.
Not good enough
Killers was a pale shadow of the team that downed Warriors on Tuesday and it was a listless performance by the team which was playing with a set of six players, its bench not being strong.
The match turned out to be a warm-up for Spikers, which expected a lot from the Killers.
K.G. Ragesh attacked with fine precision, universal Mandeep Singh was better in setting the ball for his spikers and blocker P. Rohit's blocking was most effective. International Kapil Dev was there to disturb the rival with a fine distribution of the ball.
Tigers, which impressed a lot in its loss to Spikers on Tuesday, was not able to coordinate on Wednesday.
Poor play
Its serve and reception were poor and poor blocking let it down. Experienced Subba Rao and Tom Joseph were not in their element.
On the other hand, Chargers' M. Ukkarapandiyan fed his spikers with some fine setting and Lovmeet Singh excelled in the block. Sube Singh often came up with some fine blocks and telling smashes.
After losing first two sets, Tigers tried to come back into the match and led early but a few mistakes saw Chargers draw level at 8 and then go into lead. Tigers, which needed to win the set to stay in the match, struggled hard.
As the set moved into the last stage, a penalty point against it for John Christopher stepping into the other court, took the fight out of Tigers.
According to the Tigers' coach Muthukesavulu, it was not exactly a penalty since the amended rules allowed a player to even step into the rival's court till he or she was not obstructing the other team.
Classy show
In the last match of the day, Sanjay Kumar showed his class as a universal, Ravi Kumar excelled in attack and Shelton Moses was superb in blocking as they fetched many points for Bulls. Suresh Godara distributed the ball well. Though Guruchand Singh was back in the Warriors team, he was not much effective, while Pradeep shone only in patches.
