Punjab Kings head coach Ricky Ponting showered praise on Yuzvendra Chahal after they stunned Kolkata Knight Riders by 16 runs at the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium, Mullanpur, Chandigarh in the ongoing IPL 2025 despite posting only 111 runs on the board.
The home team defended the lowest-ever total in IPL history as they came up with a brilliant bowling show. Yuzvendra Chahal, who didn’t look at his best in the previous matches, returned back to form as he bagged four wickets and conceded 28 runs in the four overs he bowled.
Chahal accounted for KKR captain Ajinkya Rahane, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Rinku Singh, and Ramandeep Singh.
Ricky Ponting said after the memorable win, “The wicket wasn’t easy, as you can see that right through the game, it was definitely holding up, but what about Chahal tonight? How good a spell of bowling was that! He actually had a fitness test before the game today with his shoulder injury he picked up in the last game and I grabbed him out of the warm-up and looked him in the eye and said, ‘Mate are you okay?’ He said coach I am 100 percent right, let me out there, yeah what a spell of bowling!”
The former Australian captain said he would have been still proud of the effort shown by his players in the second innings even if they had lost the game.
Ponting added, “Even if we had lost that game, I couldn’t have been proud of the way we went about the second half. Our batting was poor, the shot selection and execution that was all poor, but when I saw us take the field and we got the wickets early on and what we we have been lacking is, bit of belief to the ball and bit of energy in the field and that was there for everyone to see tonight.”
Ponting concluded, “I have coached a lot of games in the IPL and that might just be about the best win I ever had.”
Punjab Kings will next take on Royal Challengers Bengaluru at the M.Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru on Friday.
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