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Sumail of Team Secret
Dota 22 years agoAndreea "divushka" Esanu

Sumail back to carry yields successful Spring Tour start for Team Secret

The second act of the Dota Pro Circuit, the Spring Tour has begun in five of the six regions.

While Eastern Europe competition is postponed for the foreseeable future given the war in Ukraine, the rest of the regions will play their regional league matches for the next six weeks to determine which teams will clinch a ticket to the ESL One Stockholm Major.

Division 1 matches started with Team Liquid, the previous tour league champions, pitted against Team Secret, who hadn’t had the best run neither in the previous tour nor at the recently concluded Gamers Galaxy LAN in Dubai.

Team Secret entered the new DPC year with a revamped roster, with Syed "SumaiL" Hassan taking the mid lane position, while Michał "Nisha" Jankowski switched to carry role to fill in the empty seat left by Lasse Aukusti "MATUMBAMAN" Urpalainen’s departure. Secret’s offlane has also changed in the post TI10 shuffle, with Daryl Koh "iceiceice" Pei Xiang replacing Ludwig "zai" Wåhlberg. But, although on paper Secret were expected to have a great start of the DPC, they fell short and if the first Major of the year would have taken place, their fifth place in the Winter Tour league wouldn’t have been enough to secure a ticket.

Entering the Spring tour with no roster changes, Team Secret made, however, an adjustment that so far seems to be working. Nisha and Sumail swapped roles.

”I have been enjoying position 1 more than mid for sure, and I think Nisha shares the same feelings. It’s a super good change,” said Sumail in the post match winner’s interview on the official DreamLeague broadcast after sweeping Team Liquid 2-0.

Secret took the 2-0 victory with two drafts that forced Team Liquid to a quick tempo and constant tower pressure.

Game one featured a strong safe lane presence from Secret with Gyrocopter-Keeper of the Light, while the early skirmishes were forced with a highly mobile trio Ember Spirit-Mirana-Sand King able to apply the pressure and keep Liquid busy.

For the second game, Team Secret brought even more pressure with a mid lane Death Prophet, a support Enchantress and an offlane Venomancer, all focused on sieging the towers while being complete nuisances in the team fights for Liquid, who tried to repeal the assault with a core Omniknight, but to no avail.

The first day in the Western Europe League closed with OG taking revenge over Nigma Galaxy for the defeat at Gamers Galaxy Invitational Series Dubai 2022. The two teams have an interesting head to head match history. While OG always had Nigma’s’s numbers in online matches, the latter showed that they are net superior when it comes down to LAN.

At the recently concluded event in Dubai, OG got bested 0-2 by Nigma in the playoffs, nonetheless, returned to the league schedule, OG started with yet another victory, which puts them at an overall 3-0 record over Nigma in online matches.

Artem "Yuragi" Golubiev took the spotlight last night with a clean 10-0-11 K/D/A Terrorblade performance in game one, while in game two he played more of a utility carry hero. He brought back Vengeful Spirit to the safe lane. The laning stage went smooth courtesy of an Ogre Magi babysitting him by keeping the enemy offlane at distance.

An early, 16 minute Aghanim's Scepter from Yuragi unleashed complete chaos and put Nigma at serious disadvantage in team fights. Making perfect use of his Venge illusion, Yuragy landed a double rampage to ensure OG a perfect Spring tour start.

The Spring Tour will unfold until 22nd of April, with matches scheduled in both Division 1 and Division 2 on each day of the week. The top teams from each region will head to the Stockholm Major, which is scheduled to take place from May 12 to 22.

headline picture courtesy of Gamers Galaxy

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Andreea "divushka" EsanuI can resist anything but temptations... Follow me @DivDota

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