The CIS representative, Team Unique delivered the biggest upset of ESL One Birmingham Online: Europe and CIS by taking down Team Secret 2-0 on the fourth day of group play.
Team Secret were on a 21-0 win streak, built after they lost a game to Alliance on the 16th of May in the Gamers Without Borders semifinals. What’s even a bigger achievement is their win-loss record in their last 50 games, 47 to 3, however, streaks are there to be ended and Team Unique stopped Secret from total domination of the Dota 2 competitive scene.
Before their series with Team Secret, Unique were on a 0-2 loss and given their adversaries’ overall results, the match-up seemed more of a David versus Goliath battle. The series started with Unique scoring the first blood at the two-minute mark on Ludwig “zai” Wåhlberg’s Dragon Knight. Nonetheless, Unique’s safe lane was punished soon after, but while Zai was recovering from the slow start, Team Secret lost the mid lane and the safe lane all together and could not take any favorable trade as the game progressed.
By the 25 minute mark Team Unique were already on a 10k networth advantage and were able to control the team fights with their Treant Protector keeping the Living Armor up on Gyrocopter. Secret couldn’t break Unique’s team fight, not even when it came down to high ground defense and their game win streak came to an end. Heading into the second game, they chose to give another try to Dragon Knight, but placed him in the mid lane in the hands of Michał “Nisha” Jankowski. When they understood how the lanes would settle, Unique sent Bristleback in the mid lane and gave Queen of Pain to Stanislav “633/BZZ” Glushan in the offlane. They lost the side lanes but the mid match-up went even and they were able to slowly corner Team Secret in their side of the map once again, denying them the free farm and slowly taking full control over the map.
The last time Team Secret lost a series 0-2 was in the ESL One Los Angeles 2020 – Online: Europe & CIS when OG and Vikin.gg defeated them in the playoffs. They lost just one more series ever since, 1-2 to Team Liquid in the WePlay! Pushka League. Today’s loss pushes them on the third place in Group A, while Team Nigma take the lead with 3-0 series record.
Source: Read Full Article