Rajputana Royals crowned champions of the inaugural Archery Premier League

Rakesh Thapliyal

New Delhi: The inaugural Archery Premier League (APL) saved its best for the last as the final between the Rajputana Royals and the Prithviraaj Yodhas produced an edge-of-the-seat thriller, at the end of which the Royals held their nerves to not just storm back into the title clash but also win it in a shootoff to be crowned the APL champions.

It boiled down to a hit-and-miss match in the tiebreaking shootoff in the presence of Delhi Chief Minister, Rekha Gupta, where the two most consistent Royals’ compound archers – Ojas Deotale and Ella Gibson – hit the target, while none of the four Yodhas’ players found the yellow dot.

But the Yodhas can hold their heads high, not just for giving Royals a tough fight but for also becoming the first APL team to register a perfect rotation of eight arrows in a set, scoring a perfect 80 with all 10. But still it didn’t turn out to be enough despite taking a 4-2 lead, headed by their in-form senior compound archer, Abhishek Verma, who teamed up with Matias Grande, Gatha Khadake and Andrea Becerra.

For the Royals, recurvers Mete Gazoz and Ankita Bhakat partnered Gibson and Deotale to help their team lift the trophy, having lost just once in 12 matches on their way to winning the title.

The drama started in the first set itself, which ended with one of Khadake’s arrow getting upgraded by the judges to give the Yodhas a 78-77 win in the first set. However, the Royals roared back in the next with a 78-75 margin to square the final at 2-2.

The third set saw the Yodhas’ archers scripting history by scoring 10s on all eight arrows to win it with an unprecedented scoreline of 80-77.

The match went on a knife’s edge towards the end of the fourth set, when Grande needed a 9 to seal the championship for the Yodhas, but he hit an 8 and the Royals won the set 78-77 to make it 4-4, with a shootoff to decide the winner. And Gibson and Deotale did the rest by hitting the shootoff target twice.

Earlier in the day, in the first semi-final, the Royals dropped just six points across three sets for a 5-1 victory with a 78-78, 79-77, 77-75 scoreline to beat the Chero Archers. The league-stage toppers continued their rich vein of form, led by their compound archers Deotale and Ella Gibson, who were in brilliant 10-hitting form once again.

The Royals upped their game further after a tied first set to clinch the next two for an outright win, which was sealed with a 10 off the last arrow by the Tokyo Olympics gold medalist recurver Mete Gazoz.

A dramatic finish to the second semifinal between the Yodhas and the Mighty Marathas saw a remeasure by the judges in the fourth set giving Yodhas a 5-3 win for an entry into the final against the Royals.

It was a match that swung like a pendulum as compound archer Mike Schloesser had another perfect day for the Marathas. But it didn’t prove enough, even though they managed to level the game at 2-2 by winning the second set.

The Yodhas began by winning the first set 78-74, while the Marathas rallied to win the next 79-76. The Yodhas regained their two-point advantage at 4-2 after winning the third set 78-74 as compound man Verma led from the front with perfect 10s.

At the end of the fourth set, it appeared that the Marathas had clinched it by a point to take the semi-final into a shootoff. But a remeasure by the judges upgraded a Yodhas’ arrow, which made it 78-78, and it was enough for the Yodhas to win 5-3.