4 days Ago
Ricky Ponting has been a veteran head coach in the , being in charge of three different franchises now for a number of years and if he thinks that the Tuesday encounter in Mullanpur "might just be about the best win" he's ever had in the IPL then must have been some game. Punjab Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) cumulatively bundled out for 206, which is exactly the amount of runs the former scored in 17.2 overs in their previous encounter against the Sunrisers Hyderabad on the way to a huge score of 245 but still lost.
On Tuesday, however, the Kings defended a modest total of 111 runs as both batting units collectively failed after playing some reckless shots on a wicket that was slow and gripped but wasn't as bad as both the batting efforts made it look. Defending 111, the Kings needed everything to go their way and the multiple fielding lapses didn't really indicate what was going to unfold in the second innings. There was a bit of harakiri from the KKR batters combined with some disciplined and tight bowling from the Punjab Kings bowlers, including , Xavier Bartlett, Marco Jansen and Arshdeep Singh, especially after the hosts had used up their impact sub in batting amid collapse.
But they dug in, kept KKR batters under pressure and pulled off one of the heists of the IPL in its 18-year history. "The heart rate still up a bit for me. It's probably up over 200," Ponting told the broadcaster after the game.
"I don't need many of those games like that and my age of over 50 now. Just goes to show how funny a game it is. You know, it was only three days ago we couldn't defend 246 [against Sunrisers Hyderabad] and here we are, you know, defending 112 with 16 runs up our sleeves.
So we actually said to the guys at the halfway mark really small chases like this are sometimes the hardest. The wicket wasn't easy. You can see that right through the game was definitely holding up," PBKS head coach Ponting added.
Kings changed up things a bit with Bartlett replacing injured Lockie Ferguson in the line-up and with the Queensland bowler being more of a powerplay specialist, Arshdeep had to do the middle overs role and it worked out perfectly for the Men in Red. "Well, you can probably see the way we changed things up with the ball as well. We with Marco [Jansen] taking the first over and [Xavier] Bartlett the second, normally been a role for Arshdeep [Singh] with the brand new ball, but the match-ups tonight suggested that Jansen and Bartlett were better suited so we had to change a little bit there.
"But we just said that wins like this are always the sweetest one if we can pull this off, then this would be as good as a win most guys have probably been involved in. I've coached a lot of games in the IPL and that might just be about the best win that I've ever had," he added. The win catapulted the Kings back into the top four and from looking like topping the table at one stage, chasing a low score, the Knight Riders find themselves in sixth place on the table.
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