Punjab Kings head coach heaped praise on Chahal, saying the legspinner had passed a fitness test before the game for a shoulder niggle
ESPNcricinfo staff15-Apr-20253:44
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Punjab Kings (PBKS) head coach Ricky Ponting has been coaching in the IPL since 2014 but he called Tuesday’s low-scoring thriller against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) “just about the best win that I’ve ever had” as a coach in the tournament. Ponting watched from the sidelines as PBKS defended 111, the lowest total that has been defended in IPL history, for a 16-run win. Ponting said pulling off a win like this could be a “season-defining moment”.”The heart rate still up a bit for me – it’s probably up over 200,” Ponting told the broadcaster soon after the game. “I don’t need many of those games like that at my age of over 50 now.”It just goes to show how funny a game it is. Only three days ago we couldn’t defend 246 [245] and here we are, defending 112 [111] with 16 runs up our sleeves. We actually said to the guys at the halfway mark that really small chases like this are sometimes the hardest. The wicket wasn’t easy. You can see right through the game it was holding up.Related
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“But what about [Yuzvendra] Chahal tonight! How good a spell of bowling was that! We’ve actually put it on him a bit during the week. He had a fitness test before the game today with his shoulder injury that he picked up in the last game and I grabbed him at the warm-up, looked him in the eye and said, ‘Mate, are you OK?’ He said, ‘Coach, I’m 100% alright, let me out there’, and what a spell of bowling.”When asked what was the talk in the dressing room at the innings break, Ponting said: “Well, you can probably see the way we changed things up with the ball as well, with Marco [Jansen] taking the first over and [Xavier] Bartlett the second. Normally, it’s been a role for Arshdeep [Singh] with the brand new ball, but the match-ups tonight suggested that Jansen and Bartlett were better suited.”But we just said that wins like this are always the sweetest ones. 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.”
Ponting said his team’s batting, shot selection and decision-making were “all poor”, but what impressed him the most was how the team turned things around in the chase because their bowling, fielding and catching had been under the scanner for a few games.”Even if we had lost that game, I couldn’t have been more proud of the way we went about the second half,” he said. “But when I saw us take the field, we got a couple of wickets early on and what we’ve been lacking is a bit of belief with the ball and a bit of energy in the field, and that was there for everyone to see tonight. So if we had gone down in a really close one, I would have been telling the guys that I actually thought that that was a season-defining moment.”PBKS captain Shreyas Iyer was hardly able to put his feelings into words at the presentation after such a tense finish, which took them to fourth on the points table.”My thoughts… it’s hard to express in words,” he said. “I was just backing my instincts. I saw the ball was turning a bit, asked Yuzi to control his breathing as much as possible because you know the wickets were important and we needed to be attacking. And thankfully, right players were there at the right place. And yeah, see, I’m not able to talk. It’s tough to digest the victory and such victories actually benefit you at the end.”Shreyas himself bagged a duck in PBKS’ low total after his scythe to deep third was taken by Ramandeep Singh in the fourth over after PBKS had opted to bat. Shreyas explained that within the two balls he had faced, he realised the pitch had variable bounce, so their total was “decent”.”I faced two balls: one stayed low and one hit the bottom and absolutely carried. Other players who are good at sweeping the ball were not able to connect it. So obviously there was a variable bounce in the wicket and we got to a decent total, to be honest looking at the victory with 16 runs.”I think we batted decently, but other than that, what I made out of the wicket was it was variable and the bounce wasn’t consistent. So we had that at the back of our mind and we discussed with the bowlers to stay in the stumps as much as possible and they executed the plans really well.”