Devank Dalal: PKL stats, records and the best raiding rate the league has seen

Devank Dalal is a 26-year-old raider from Rohtak who scored 271 raid points in 16 matches of Pro Kabaddi League Season 12, an average of 16.94 a match that no season in the league’s history has bettered. He was the top raider of Season 11 with 301 points for the Patna Pirates, holds the record for the fastest 50 raid points in a season, and travels to Japan this month as one of India’s four raiders at the Asian Games.

The number to hold on to is that 16.94, because it explains both what he is and what happened to him last season.

Devank Dalal’s PKL career in numbers

Season	Team	Matches	Raid points	Note
9 (2022)	Jaipur Pink Panthers	Limited	Limited	New Young Player, title-winning squad
10 (2023-24)	Jaipur Pink Panthers	1	–	Fractured skull in training
11 (2024)	Patna Pirates	25	301	Best Raider, 18 Super 10s, 8 Super Raids
12 (2025)	Bengal Warriorz	16	271	Captain, 15 Super 10s

Two seasons of real volume, in other words, and one of those was cut short by his own team’s selection rather than by anything he did on the mat.

16.94 raid points a match

Five raiders have ever passed 300 raid points in a PKL season: Pardeep Narwal, Pawan Sehrawat, Naveen Kumar, Devank and Ayan Lohchab. Line those seasons up by rate rather than by total and the order changes.

Season	Raider	Raid points	Matches	Per match
12 (2025)	Devank Dalal	271	16	16.94
7 (2019)	Pawan Sehrawat	346	24	14.42
12 (2025)	Ayan Lohchab	316	22	14.36
5 (2017)	Pardeep Narwal	369	26	14.19
7 (2019)	Pardeep Narwal	302	22	13.73
7 (2019)	Naveen Kumar	301	23	13.09
8 (2021-22)	Pawan Sehrawat	304	24	12.67
11 (2024)	Devank Dalal	301	25	12.04

Devank’s Season 12 sits two and a half raid points a match clear of the next name, and the next name is the best season Pawan Sehrawat ever had. Three of the seven came in Season 7 alone, when Sehrawat, Narwal and Naveen Kumar all cleared 300 in the same campaign. He also turned 15 of his 16 appearances into Super 10s, which is to say he failed to reach ten raid points exactly once all year.

The honest caveat is the one the table makes obvious: 16 matches is a smaller sample than 22 or 26, and rates hold up less well the longer you have to sustain them. His own Season 11 is the evidence for that, 25 matches at 12.04. But the gap here is not marginal, and it was not built against weak opposition in a good team. Bengal Warriorz finished bottom.

The award he lost from the bench

By the middle of October 2025 Devank led the Season 12 raid chart with 262 points to Lohchab’s 196, a lead of 66 with the league stage running out. He finished on 271. Lohchab finished on 316 and took the Best Raider award.

The 45 points between them were scored in matches Devank did not play. Bengal were already out of contention, last in the standings with six wins from 18, and the coaching staff used the closing fixtures on other players. Bengal’s head coach said afterwards that they had wanted to test other players and give them a chance to prove themselves with two matches left.

It is a defensible call for a side going nowhere and it is also how the league’s second-best raiding season by volume, and its best by rate, ended without the trophy that normally follows.

From 20 lakh to 2.2 crore in a year

The Patna Pirates bought him at the Season 11 auction in 2024 for 20.10 lakh rupees. He repaid that with 301 raid points, the Best Raider award and a run to the final, which Patna lost 32-23 to the Haryana Steelers at Balewadi in Pune on 29 December 2024.

A year later, at the Season 12 auction, the Bengal Warriorz paid 2.205 crore for him. That made him the most expensive Indian player of the auction and the second most expensive overall, behind Mohammadreza Shadloui, who went to the Gujarat Giants for 2.23 crore. Bengal made him captain in August 2025.

Roughly eleven times his previous price in twelve months is a violent revaluation even by this league’s standards, and it is worth setting next to what happened at the same auction to the man whose record rate he has now beaten: Pawan Sehrawat, four times the most expensive player in PKL history, went to Tamil Thalaivas for 59.5 lakh and nearly went unsold.

Rohtak, the army and a fractured skull

He was born on 1 April 2000 into a farming family in Rohtak, and he is refreshingly unromantic about how he started. He took up kabaddi after his tenth-standard exams because he had noticed that friends with sporting commitments were getting out of class, and he has said as much in as many words: he never had the patience to sit and study. Serious training began in 2018. He joined the Indian Army team through its sports programme, and PKL scouts found him at an inter-services tournament.

Season 9 with the Jaipur Pink Panthers came through the New Young Player route and brought a title he barely played in. Season 10 was worse. He fractured his skull in training and got onto the mat once.

Then Season 11, and the record that still reads oddly next to that: in Season 12 he reached 50 raid points in three matches, the fastest anyone has managed in a PKL season, beating Siddharth Desai’s four matches from 2019.

India’s raiding four in Japan

Devank is one of eight Asian Games debutants in India’s twelve, and one of four specialist raiders alongside Lohchab, Ashu Malik and Arjun Deshwal. Lohchab and Devank finished first and second on the Season 12 raid chart and Deshwal fourth, which is a striking amount of current form to put in one attack.

The competition is at the Tokai Citizens Gymnasium in Aichi from 21 to 26 September. India are in Group A with Japan, Republic of Korea, Bangladesh and Chinese Taipei and open against the hosts at 6:00am IST on 21 September. Iran, the side India beat 33-29 in the Hangzhou final, are in Group B and cannot be met before the semi-finals.

What India get from Devank specifically is a raider who does not need a functioning team around him, which is the thing Season 12 actually proved. Whether he can hold 16.94 over a tournament is a different question, and one nobody has an answer to yet, because he has never been asked to do it in a side that was winning.

Devank Dalal: the quick answers

How old is Devank Dalal?

He was born on 1 April 2000 in Rohtak, Haryana, which makes him 26. He plays as a raider.

Which team does Devank Dalal play for?

Bengal Warriorz, who bought him for 2.205 crore rupees at the Season 12 auction and made him captain. He played for the Patna Pirates in Season 11 and the Jaipur Pink Panthers before that. The Season 13 auction has been reported for late October 2026, without confirmation from Mashal Sports.

How many raid points does Devank Dalal have?

301 in Season 11 and 271 in Season 12, either side of two seasons at Jaipur that produced almost nothing. He is one of five raiders to have passed 300 in a single season.

What records does Devank Dalal hold?

The fastest 50 raid points in a PKL season, reached in three matches in Season 12. His 16.94 raid points a match that season is also higher than any of the seven 300-point seasons the league has produced. Our list of the biggest single-match raiding hauls has the individual-game records.

Why did he only play 16 matches in Season 12?

Selection, not injury. Bengal Warriorz were bottom of the table and out of playoff contention, and the coaching staff rested him for the closing fixtures to look at other players. If the raiding terms here are unfamiliar, our guide to how kabaddi is played explains Super 10s and Super Raids.

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