Punjab Kings last week failed to defend a total of 245 against Sunrisers Hyderabad. Yesterday, at Mohali, who would have given them a chance to defend 111 runs against Kolkota Knight Riders! This is equivalent to what all cricket lovers believe ” The glorious uncertainty of cricket.”
Batting first, everything looked normal except the 0.5 degrees swing the seamers extracted whilst Punjab Kings openers, namely Priyanash Arya and Prabhsimran Singh stitched 39 runs upfront, but disaster struck as Harshit Rana struck a double blow when he dismissed Araya for 22 and followed up with sending the Punjab skipper Shreyas Ayer for no score .
From 39 for 2 wickets, Punjab Kings lost 2 more scalps in Jos Inglis with the score on 42 after which marching orders were given to top scorer Prabhsimran Singh for 30 to his credit and Punjab Kings rattled on 54 for 4 wickets at the conclusion of the power play overs. Bottom line analysis read match losing figures of advancement to 74 for 4 wickets to 111 all out in 15.1 overs.
Glenn Maxwell, Nemal Wadhera established batters on any given conditions, but they could not come to terms with Harshit Rana, Varun Chackravarthy, and Sunil Narine.
Rana 3 for 25 with seam, Chackravarthy 2 for 21 mystery spinner and Sunil Narine spun his wrist as well with 2 for 14.
The target of 112 looked done and dusted in favour of Kolkota Knight Riders.
But the boys from Kolkota were in for a rude shock as both openers Sunil Narine and Quinton de Kock were done and dusted for the day with Kolkota Night riders on 7 runs for 2 wickets.
Kolkota Knight Riders then looked on course on 66 for 2 wickets with Ajankya Rahane on 17 and Angaish Raguvansi batting sensibly for his 34. Then came Yuzvendra Chahal as he filled up the senses of the entire Chandigarh Stadium like a night in the forest as 6 wickets tumbled down in 5.1 overs, thus proving his fantastic control of accuracy in the art of leg spin accounting for 6 batters for the addition of just 17 runs.
Kolkota Knight Riders, despite Andre Russell taking 16 runs off a Charl over, were undone neck and crop for 95 runs with Marco Jansen and Arshdeep Singh giving chin music to the tail enders.
Yuzvendra Chahal ended with 4 for 28 despite a 16 run bashing he faced at the hands of Andre Russell, Marco Jansen 3 for 17 in a 3 over spell with Xavier Bartlet, Maxwell, and Arshdeep Singh picking up a wicket each.
Bottom line Kolkota Knight Riders bowled out for 95 runs in 15.1 overs as Punjab Kings won by 16 runs.
Fair to state its rags to riches for Punjab Kings, a team that could not defend a score of 245 last week, defended a score of 111 against the batting likes of Ajinkya Rahane, Quinton de Kock , Sunil Narine, Angrish Raguvansi, Venketesh Iyer, Rinku Singh and Andre Russell.
PBKS are now in the top 4 of the points table.
What’s up today? It’s Delhi Capitals in pursuit against Rajasthan Royals.