Synopsis: Shreyas’s maiden IPL hundred and Prabhsimran’s 69 end Punjab’s six-game losing streak; Inglis’s 72 against his old mentor Ponting never enough as PBKS keep playoff hopes alive
Punjab Kings began this season winning seven games in a row. Then they lost six. On Saturday night in Lucknow, Shreyas Iyer hit a maiden IPL hundred off the last ball of the penultimate over – a six that finished the game – as Punjab Kings beat Lucknow Super Giants by seven wickets. They now move to 15 points and fourth place. Rajasthan Royals, one game left and two points behind, can still leapfrog them.
Shreyas finishes it
Last year, after Punjab Kings finished runners-up, Shreyas Iyer said the job was still half done. He wanted to receive the trophy next year. Seven wins, then six losses — a season that had folded in on itself in three weeks, leaving a team that once looked like title contenders scrambling for a lifeline on the final night of the league stage. On Saturday night, with the season on the line, he answered.
He built steadily through his partnership with Prabhsimran – pulls, drives, the crease used with authority. When he drove Prince Yadav back over his head in the thirteenth over, Prabhsimran at the non-striker’s end called out “Shot yaar.” The chase was no longer a crisis. When Shami returned in the fifteenth over, Shreyas hit him for three sixes in a single over to kill it entirely. Then in the last over, needing six to win and eight for his hundred, the slower ball from Mohsin angled across – two requirements, one ball, no margin. He went deep in the crease, got under the length and mowed it flat over cow corner. The ball cleared the rope. The hundred arrived. The game ended on the same delivery.
101 off 51 balls. Eleven fours, five sixes. His first IPL hundred, on the night it mattered most. He took off his helmet, lifted his arms and smiled. Ricky Ponting offered the tribute without reservation. “The captain has done that all season. That’s his first IPL century tonight. There’s a reason I spent as much money at the auction a couple of years ago on him.”
Prabhsimran’s patience
Four years Prabhsimran Singh spent on the Punjab Kings bench, watching KL Rahul and Chris Gayle open. “Obviously with KL bhai and Chris Gayle as openers, I had to sit,” he had said once. “But I was learning from them – watching them bat in the nets, talking to them when I got a chance.” He waited.
On Saturday he did not wait. Priyansh Arya fell first ball to Shami. Connolly went for 18 off 10 – four boundaries, then bowled through the gate – and Punjab were 22 for 2. Shami had reduced a 197-run chase to a crisis in 2.2 overs. Prabhsimran arrived and began accumulating – singles, the odd boundary, using the crease, reading Mohsin’s slower balls and picking the right one to launch. Pant dropped him on 20 at square leg, diving but losing the ball. Forty-nine more runs came after Pant grassed that chance – a six over cow corner off Mohsin when the bowler became predictable, a fifty off 36 balls, his sixth of the season.
He and Shreyas put on 140 – the fifth highest partnership in Punjab Kings’ IPL history. When Arjun Tendulkar’s low full toss trapped him lbw for 69 off 39, Punjab still needed 35 off 30 with Shreyas on 72. The equation was comfortable. The foundation was his.
Inglis’s gurudakshina, with a twist
Josh Inglis learned to hit like this at Punjab Kings, under Ricky Ponting. On Saturday night, he used it against them. “Now I feel like my hands are out here a bit more so I’m able to swing through the line of the ball more – it’s a lot easier to access down the ground,” he had said last year.
The shift was small – a little further from the body, the hands moving out to give him access to the line he had always struggled to find. Arshdeep Singh got the first over. Three fours before it ended – a cream through the covers off the first ball, the stride forward, the swing unhurried. The hands were exactly where Ponting had helped put them.
Marco Jansen’s swing in the powerplay troubled him early. But once conditions settled, the access returned – a six in the ninth over where Arshdeep at deep square leg stepped on the rope trying to catch it, then three boundaries in four balls when Arshdeep returned in the eleventh.
Inglis’s hands Ponting helped build had given his bowlers a long evening. But Shreyas and Prabhsimran were more desperate. “Surreal feeling, finishing a game and scoring a century, I was in a great mind space… I’m ecstatic to be honest. It’s my first hundred and came at the right time when the team needed it. I told Ricky today that let’s not have any meetings,” Shreyas said. “And the result is here.”
Brief scores: LSG 196/6 in 20 overs (Inglis 72, Badoni 43, Samad 37*; Chahal 2/25, Jansen 2/33) lost to PBKS 200/3 in 18 overs (Shreyas 101*, Prabhsimran 69, Connolly 18; Shami 2/45, Tendulkar 1/36) by 7 wickets.
