NAVI played their first match in Group D at ESL Pro League Season 15 on Wednesday, defeating Poland's AGO. Despite the fact that the outcome of the match was decided on two maps, the drawing of the second of them dragged on for several dozen rounds.
The first map of the match was Dust2, and on it Natus Vincere immediately gained an overwhelming advantage, despite the unfavorable circumstances faced by the players – ingame leader Kirill «Boombl4» Mikhailov was forced to miss this match due to a positive test for coronavirus, and his replacement Daniel «headtr1ck» Valitov participated in the game, being in isolation, separately from the rest of the participants. AGO managed to win only one round, and as a result the map ended with a score of 16 – 1.
At Mirage, however, the situation changed, and the fight for this map became the longest in history for major LAN events. AGO managed to win several rounds in a row right from the start, and after that the initiative changed hands several times. AGO was the first to reach the match point at 15 – 13, but the Poles could not realize the advantage. Natus Vincere finished the match only after 7 more overtime periods and a total of over 70 rounds. The best performance was demonstrated by s1mple, who scored 64 frags.
After the match, B1lad3 explained that the match took so long mainly because of the participation of a substitute player, with whom the team did not have enough practice.