Maninder Singh: the kabaddi raider who is 233 points from the PKL record
Only Pardeep Narwal has scored more raid points in the Pro Kabaddi League, and Narwal has retired. At 36, Maninder needs about 25 more matches to catch him.
Sep 1, 2026
Maninder Singh has scored more raid points than every player in Pro Kabaddi League history except one. He is 233 behind the man in front of him, that man retired last year, and in the season just gone Maninder played seven matches.
That is the whole shape of his career at 36. A raider whose scoring rate matches the record holder’s almost exactly, sitting close enough to the record to see it, with the games running out.
Maninder Singh at a glance
| Detail | |
|---|---|
| Born | 31 January 1990, Dasuya, Hoshiarpur district, Punjab |
| Age | 36 |
| Height | 6ft (183cm) |
| Position | Raider |
| PKL debut | 2014, Jaipur Pink Panthers |
| Teams | Jaipur Pink Panthers (2014), Bengal Warriors (2017 to 2024), Patna Pirates (2025 to date) |
| PKL matches | 165 |
| Raid points | 1,568 |
| Total points | 1,584 |
| Super 10s | 80 |
| Super raids | 46 |
| Raid success rate | 60.37 per cent |
| Titles | PKL Season 7 (2019, Bengal Warriors), 2017 Asian Kabaddi Championship (India) |
| Day job | Punjab Police |
The record he is chasing is a longevity record, not a scoring one
Pardeep Narwal holds the PKL raiding record with 1,801 raid points. Maninder is second on 1,568. Put the two career lines next to each other and the interesting number is not the gap, it is how the gap was built.
| Player | Matches | Raid points | Raid points per match | Super 10s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pardeep Narwal | 190 | 1,801 | 9.48 | 88 |
| Maninder Singh | 165 | 1,568 | 9.50 | 80 |
Three hundredths of a raid point separate them. Narwal is 233 points ahead because he played 25 more matches, and 25 matches at Maninder’s own career rate comes to about 238 points. The all-time raiding record in this league has been decided almost entirely by who stayed on the mat longer.
Which makes the rest of it awkward. Narwal went unsold at the PKL 12 auction and retired in June 2025 at 28, so the 1,801 is frozen and Maninder is the only active raider anywhere near it. He needs roughly 25 matches at his career rate. He got seven last season.
Jaipur, then two years off the mat
Maninder went to Jaipur Pink Panthers in the first PKL season in 2014 and finished it with 130 raid points, the third-highest of any raider that year. Then he disappeared. A shoulder problem kept him out of professional kabaddi from 2015 until 2017, which in a league that was expanding fast is a long time to be missing.
He came back in Season 5 with Bengal Warriors and stayed seven years. The franchise built its raiding around him for most of that period, and he took over the captaincy in 2019.
The 2019 title he led Bengal to and did not play in
This is the part of his record most write-ups flatten into a line about leading Bengal Warriors to their maiden title. He did lead them there. He was not on the mat when they won it.
Maninder dislocated his shoulder during a raid in Bengal’s league match against Dabang Delhi, and it ruled him out of the knockouts. He watched the semi-final and the final from the bench, working as an assistant coach in a tracksuit. Bengal beat Dabang Delhi 39-34 in the Season 7 final in Ahmedabad, with Iranian all-rounder Mohammad Nabibakhsh scoring nine raid points and a tackle point in his absence.
It is the only PKL title he has, and the one match of it that mattered most he did not raid in.
The decline, in the numbers
On 1 December 2024, at the Noida Indoor Stadium, Maninder became the second player after Narwal to pass 1,500 raid points. Patna Pirates beat his Bengal side 38-35 the same night, which was closer to the pattern of that season than the milestone was: he finished PKL 11 with 102 points from 15 matches at 6.80 a game, his worst return since coming back in 2017.
Bengal let him go. Patna Pirates picked him up at the PKL 12 auction for 20 lakh rupees, a price that says more about how the league now values a 35-year-old raider than any of his career totals do. In PKL 12 he played seven matches and added 40 raid points, while Patna’s raiding was carried by Ayan Lohchab, who topped the entire league with 316. Dabang Delhi won that season, beating Puneri Paltan 31-28 in the final on 31 October 2025.
For context on where he sits among his franchise’s all-time scorers, our rundown of every PKL team’s leading points scorer covers the wider picture, and his best individual nights are collected in Maninder’s five biggest PKL performances.
India career, and the squad he is not in
Maninder was part of the India squad that won the 2017 Asian Kabaddi Championship, where India beat Pakistan 36-22 in the final under Ajay Thakur. He has never had the long international run his club numbers suggest, largely because India’s raiding depth in this era has been absurd.
That has not changed. India named its kabaddi squads for the 2026 Asian Games on 23 August, and the 12 men going to Japan are Ashu Malik, Ayan Lohchab, Devank Dalal, Arjun Deshwal, Sunil Kumar, Jaideep Dahiya, Rahul Sethpal, Gaurav Khatri, Sumit Sangwan, Ankit Jaglan, Pawan Sehrawat and Aslam Inamdar, with Sunil captaining. Maninder is not among them. The kabaddi events run from 21 to 26 September at the Nagoya City Trade and Industry Centre.
Two of the raiders picked ahead of him have profiles of their own here: Ashu Malik and, on the defensive side of the same squad conversation, Mohammad Reza Shadloui.
What happens next
PKL 13 is the answer, and it has not been scheduled yet. Reports put the auction somewhere between 18 and 25 October 2026 and the season start in December, though Mashal Sports has confirmed neither. Whether Maninder gets a squad place, and whether a squad place turns into 25 matches of raiding, is the only route left to 1,801.
If it does not happen, he finishes as the most efficient raider the league never gave the record to. That is a strange thing to be, and it is a more honest description of him than the title line usually attached to his name.
Maninder Singh: quick answers
How old is Maninder Singh?
He was born on 31 January 1990 in Dasuya, in Punjab’s Hoshiarpur district, which makes him 36.
Which team does Maninder Singh play for?
Patna Pirates, who signed him at the PKL 12 auction in 2025 for 20 lakh rupees after seven seasons with Bengal Warriors.
How many raid points does Maninder Singh have?
1,568 raid points from 165 PKL matches, along with 80 Super 10s and 46 super raids. Only Pardeep Narwal, on 1,801, has more.
Has Maninder Singh won the Pro Kabaddi League?
Yes, with Bengal Warriors in Season 7 in 2019, though a dislocated shoulder kept him out of the semi-final and the final.
Is Maninder Singh in India’s Asian Games squad?
No. India’s 12-man squad for the 2026 Games was announced on 23 August and he is not in it.
For the wider kabaddi picture, see our kabaddi points table explainer, the list of Kabaddi World Cup winners and a plain guide to how many players a kabaddi team has.