Team Secret has done it again as the team was declared the champion of the ESL One Birmingham 2019. With the win, Secret has won three of the four Dota 2 ESL One tournaments. It began with ESL One Hamburg back in October of last year, followed by ESL One Katowice last February. The team was not part of ESL One Mumbai.
In this latest tournament, Secret clawed its way out from the Lower Brackets all the way to the Grand Finals. During the Group Stage, the team got a 6-4 standing, allowing Secret to get a loss in the Lower Bracket.
In the first round, Secret played against OG. OG had a good start in the Group Stage before dropping in the succeeding days. Secret made short work of OG sweeping its opponent 2-0.
In the second round, Secret faced TNC Predator. Secret took the first game, but was unable to find an answer to TNC's picks in the second game, managing only two kills. That wasn't a problem, as Secret easily won the third game on the back of Yeik Nai "MidOne" Zheng and his Templar Assassin.
Gambit Esports was next, and Secret had an easier time as the team took the first game in under 32 minutes and the second one at just above 27 minutes.
The win meant that Secret now needed to face PSG.LGD. After a hard fought battle, LGD got the win in the first game. It didn't appear to bother Secret as in the second game, both MidOne and Micha "Nisha" Jankowski had double digit kills to give Secret the win. In the third game, LGD was unable to find an answer to Nisha's Spectre, which was helped by Ludwig "zai" Wåhlberg on his Batrider.
With that, Secret moved to the Grand Finals to face EG. In the Group Stage, EG had beaten Secret 2-0. However in the Grand Finals, Secret showed why the team was always considered to be ahead of the meta. The first game was initially close, especially with an excellent performance by EG's Sumail "Suma1L" Hassan on Templar Assassin. However it was not enough, as Secret got win on the combination of MidOne's Storm Spirit and Nisha's Sven. EG apparently learned its lesson and quickly won the second game in under 36 minutes.
The third game was initially close, but Secret slowly dominated the lanes and slowly took out objectives. The key play of the game was Yazied "Yapzor" Jaradat on Engima, who managed to catch three players from EG on a Black Hole for the win. Other teams would have given up by this point but not EG. In the fourth game, EG went with a Mars pick, the first in the series, along with Batrider. However it was Suma1L on Storm Spirit that Secret had trouble answering. The game ended with EG getting 32 kills compared with Secret's six.
The series, and the tournament, went down to the deciding game five. EG again went for a Mars pick, with Spectre and Death Prophet in positions one and two. Secret scored first blood with just 33 seconds in with Puppey on his Shadow Shaman managing to catch Gustav "s4" Magnusson's Domm and zai securing the kill. EG managed to take the lead, but a team fight went in Secret's favor to swing the game. The nail in the coffin was a VAC combo from Yapzor on Nyx Assassin and zai on Dark Seer taking out three EG players.
"It's fun to be MVP man, just play good." - @CLEMENTINATOR as he's crowned #MBmvp of #ESLOne Birmingham 2019! pic.twitter.com/rkMzAydffo
— ESL Dota2 (@ESLDota2) June 2, 2019
Along with the championship, Secret team captain Clement "Puppey" Ivanov was declared the tournament MVP, which comes with a Mercedes Benz.
Up next for Secret is the EPICENTER Major, the last tournament for the DPC Season before The International 2019.
