Punjab Kings captain Shikhar Dhawan admitted losing three wickets in the Powerplay overs proved costly for them against Sunrisers Hyderabad after suffering a two-run loss at the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium, Mullanpur, Chandigarh on Tuesday.
While chasing 183, PBKS lost three wickets in the first five overs as Jonny Bairstow, Shikhar Dhawan, and Prabhsimran Singh were dismissed cheaply to have their team tottering at 20-3. Dhawan was even dropped on 10 but he could not make the most of his second life.
Furthermore, Sam Curran (29) and Sikandar Raza (28) got off to starts but could not convert them into substantial scores. Subsequently, Shashank Singh and Ashutosh Sharma, the two heroes against Gujarat Titans, almost pull off another heist.
Singh smashed an unbeaten 46 off just 25 balls whereas Sharma scored 33 runs from 15 balls as the home team fell short of the target by only two runs. 29 runs were needed off the final over and Ashutosh kept the fans on the edge of their seats with his blistering hitting.
Shikhar Dhawan said after the game, “I feel that Shashank and Ashutosh played a great knock, we restricted them to a good total, but we couldn’t cash in on the first 6 overs, lost 3 wickets and that’s where we fell behind and it cost us in the end. When the wicket wasn’t offering a lot of bounce, every individual will have to look back and change their approach.”
Dhawan feels they could have restricted the opposition to less than 170 but batting let them down. He added, “We dropped a catch off the last ball, we could have kept them down by 10-15 runs, but batting let us down. It’s great to see youngsters chipping in with such consistency (on Shashank and Ashutosh). There was always hope that they could finish the game, but we got so close and that’ll give us confidence going into the future games, but we’ll have to do better going ahead.”
Punjab Kings will next take on Rajasthan Royals at the same venue of Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium, Mullanpur, Chandigarh on Saturday.
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