Lucknow Super Giants posted a hefty total of 257 runs on the board which is always going to be a mountain to climb for any franchise, any team in the world. The same happened for the Punjab Kings at the Punjab Cricket Association Stadium, Mohali on Friday.
The innings started in dramatic fashion as debutant Gurnoor Brar’s heart came out of the mouth as Atharva Taide at backward point dropped KL Rahul off the first ball of the over. This would’ve meant a wicket of high caliber in the first-ever ball of Gurnoor’s IPL career.
The outcome didn’t turn out that costly as Kagiso Rabada had the last laugh after getting banged for a six by KL Rahul pretty early inside the powerplay. But the events that followed weren’t at all rosy for the bowling side.
Kyle Mayers evolved into beast mode and took on the opposition bowlers. Initially, during the opening stand, he took on Arshdeep Singh for four boundaries in the second over. Then, Ayush Badoni joined hands with Mayers and jolted 33 runs stand together for the second wicket. The Caribbean all-rounder went dismissed at the cusp of the powerplay with scores seeing 74-2 after 5.5 overs.
Marcus Stoinis followed and helped to carry the momentum forward. Gurnoor was smashed for some more runs in his third over and was impact subbed with Prabhsimran Singh by the PBKS management after the ninth over. The idea of going with a solitary spinner in the playing XI vividly backfired on Shikhar Dhawan and rightly so he admitted during the post-match ceremony.
Stoinis and Badoni continued the assault for the Supergiants and snarred 89 runs for the third-wicket stand. Every member in the middle order stepped in with charge and bulldozed the home team bowling line-up. 101 runs were stockpiled in the last seven overs of the first innings where Stoinis, Badoni, and Pooran played a significant part.
The Australian all-rounder who had a poor strike rate in IPL 2023 during the slog overs bludgeoned 72 runs off just 40 deliveries. Nicholas Pooran played his natural game and amassed 45 runs off 19 balls. With some late blisters from Deepak Hooda and Krunal Pandya, LSG recorded the second-highest total in IPL history, i.e. 257/5.
LSG returns to winnings ways leapfrogging to the second position in the league table.
Arriving for the chase, PBKS lost their skipper early in the first over itself as Stoinis weaved magic with the cork in hand as well. Dhawan tried to slice one widish delivery towards the deep cover region but holed out to Pandya in the deep end.
For PBKS, their impact substitute left little or no impact with the bat as Prabhsimran Singh fell for a paltry score of 9 runs off 13 deliveries. It was the Afghan pacer – Naveen-ul-Haq who drew the second blood of the innings right in his first over.
Amit Mishra, who was drafted in as the impact sub for Mayers took some lusty hits initially as fresh legs in the form of Atharva Taide and Sikandar Raza arrived on the scene. Previously, Avesh Khan was blown away for three fours, and Mishra wasn’t spared as well.
After ending the powerplay on 55-2, they slowly switched gears and tried to narrow the difference between runs and balls left. Although it’s quite improbable to do so in such a humongous chase, Taide’s 66 off 36 and Raza’s 36 off 22 steadied things for the Kings.
Runs did come in the middle and PBKS was going between 10 and 11 runs per over after the 10th over. But the negative aspect was that the Punjab-based franchise kept losing wickets which meant brakes were continuously applied by the LSG bowlers.
Despite bowling some looseners and going for runs, Ravi Bishnoi ended up extracting the prized scalps of Atharva Taide and Liam Livingstone. Sam Curran and Jitesh Sharma tried to step on the accelerator and go for some slogs, they connected a few but eventually faltered to the steep increase in the required rate.
It was a matter of time before LSG enforced an all-out folding of the tail and PBKS got bundled up for 201 with a ball to spare. Yash Thakur ended with some scalps at the slog overs and finished with a four-for. Naveen was the next best with three wickets under his name.