Punjab Kings are back to winning ways after a comprehensive victory over table-toppers Gujarat Titans. PBKS became only the second team in the tournament to beat Gujarat after Sunrisers Hyderabad. With this win, they have jumped to 5^th place in the standings. GT won the toss and elected to bat first at DY Patil stadium. They kept losing wickets at regular intervals due to the brilliant bowling display by the PBKS.

Sai Sudharsan scored a standout unbeaten 65 from 50 balls to take GT’s score to a respective total of 143. In reply Shikhar Dhawan, Banuka Rajapaksa and Liam Livingstone made sure PBKS chase the total with 4 overs to spare which boosted their Net Run Rate. Punjab captain Mayank Agarwal was very happy with his team’s bowling effort.

Mayank said: “I thought we bowled exceedingly well, we got early wickets and choked them in the middle. That really helped us to restrict them to a below-par score. The partnership between Shikhar and Bhanu was crucial for us.”

Let’s look at the major talking points from the game –

Shubman Gill’s Struggle Continues

The 22-year-old opening batter was released by Kolkata Knight Riders with questions over his batting in T20 cricket. However, Gill started the tournament brilliantly with two 80+ scores but since then he was not been quite the same. It was another single-digit score from the opener who got dismissed for 9 by a brilliant runout by Rishi Dhawan. The opening partnership is something Gujarat is struggling with, and they will need Shubman to get back to his form quickly.

Image Credits: Cricket Addictor

Kagiso Rabada Back to His Best

The South African pacer looked at his best against Gujarat Titans. Rabada had a slow start in this IPL as per his standards. He joined PBKS after Delhi released him and came with huge expectations. Finally, he is paying dividends for his price with another 4 wicket haul in such a crucial game for his side. Rabada picked up in form Wriddhiman Saha, Rahul Tewatia, Rashid Khan and Lockie Ferguson. He is back into the purple cap race with 17 wickets in total.

Changes in PBKS Batting Order

Punjab did not have a big run to chase last night and changed their batting order a bit. Jonny Bairstow was given the chance to open the batting where he played his best cricket. But sadly it was another failure from the Englishman as we got dismissed for just 1. Mayank Agarwal shifted himself to the middle order.

He was about to come in at number four but Shikhar Dhawan (62 off 53) and Rajapaksa (40 off 28) put up an 87 run partnership which took PBKS to a winning position. They decided to send Liam Livingstone to finish the game as early as possible and he did it in style smashing 28 runs in one over of Mohammed Shami which included the biggest six of this year’s IPL (117 m). Mayank said about the thoughts of making changes in the batting order.

“We would like to string a few (wins), no better time than getting a few wins back-to-back. We are trying to get the best out of Jonny. He’s done well opening. I said, ‘It is okay, will bat at four, will anchor the innings at four. With Livi (Livingstone) it was clear, that Shikhar batted through and Livi could go out and play the way he wants to play. It was nice the way he played, got the score quickly. When we got to that position, two points are almost clear, if we can score it as quickly as possible, we could also improve the Net Run-Rate,” he added.