Punjab Kings 200 for 3 (Iyer 101*, Prabhsimran 69) beat Lucknow Super Giants 196 for 6 (Inglis 72, Badoni 43, Chahal 2-25, Jansen 2-33) by seven wickets
Shreyas Iyer’s first IPL century helped Punjab Kings break a six-match losing streak and keep their playoff hopes alive. PBKS are now in the top four and will remain there should Rajasthan Royals lose their final game of the season against Mumbai Indians. A weakened Lucknow Super Giants – they fielded only two overseas players in the XII, with Mitchell Marsh and Aiden Markram going home – were beaten with 12 balls and seven wickets to spare.
LSG had a hit-and-miss powerplay. Overs two, three and four produced just six runs. Overs one, five and six produced 58 runs. Ayush Badoni walked in ahead of Rishabh Pant at No. 4, when the innings was going nowhere. Badoni himself was 2 off 5 before suddenly surging to 42 off 15.
Josh Inglis was 16 off 6 with four boundaries. From there, he made just 10 off the next 15 balls. Just when it looked like he had lost all form – including instances where his favourite ramps were failing him – the Australian batter found another high-scoring period, hitting 29 off nine balls. He brought up his fifty during this second burst and was largely the reason why LSG could get to a total of 196.
Yuzvendra Chahal was crucial to PBKS’ bowling effort. He dismissed Badoni, though credit for that should go to Prabhsimran Singh, who had the batter stumped with smart glovework. Badoni made the mistake of thinking the ball was dead as soon as he played and missed. It was not. Prabhsimran waited for the moment he knew was coming – Badoni resetting his position in the crease. Just as his back foot went up he flipped the bails off.
Rishabh Pant, who began the season as opener, then wanted to be LSG’s No. 3 spot, came in at No. 5 today. He faced 14 balls from Chahal and hit him for two boundaries. But the legspinner won the battle in the end, concentrating on keeping the ball wide of the left-hander’s reach. Chahal could have dismissed Pant for 20 off 19 had Iyer taken a simple catch at extra cover. But Iyer’s drop didn’t matter much, because Chahal still dismissed him on 26 off 22.
Arshdeep Singh was having a bad night. PBKS, knowing they can’t afford any mis-steps, took their World Cup winner off the attack. They opted for a few overs of Shashank Singh, and the gamble worked. Shashank got rid of Inglis in the 17th over. Marco Jansen (4-0-33-2) and Vijaykumar Vyshak (3-0-26-0) delivered superb 18th and 19th overs, which cost just 10 runs. PBKS then turned to Arshdeep for the 20th, over Azmatullah Omarzai – who had almost bowled a wicket-maiden earlier in the night – and Arshdeep leaked runs again. Samad denied singles and kept strike for all nine balls of the over (including three wides) and hit 17 runs. LSG hit 28 boundaries in the innings. Ten of those came off Arshdeep. His economy rate of 17.33 was a new personal low for him in the IPL.
According to ESPNcricinfo’s ball-by-ball data, Priyansh Arya had a strike rate of 366 against short balls in the IPL until April 27 this year. On April 28, PBKS suffered their first of six straight losses.
Since April 28, Arya has faced eight short balls, scored six runs and gotten out twice, including the first ball of the chase today to Mohammed Shami. Shami has nine wickets in the powerplay (out of 12 over all this season). Only Kagiso Rabada (17), Bhuvneshwar Kumar (15), Mohammed Siraj (13) and Jofra Archer (10) have done better.
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