Ponting feels it might be the best IPL win for him
Ponting said his team's batting, shot selection and decision-making were "all poor", but what impressed him the most was how the team turned things around in the chase because their bowling, fielding and catching had been under the scanner for a few games
HYDERABAD: Punjab Kings head coach Ricky Ponting said the team’s win against Kolkata Knight Riders when it defended the lowest ever total of 111 on Tuesday night, was might be the best win he had ever had in IPL.
“The heart rate is still up a bit for me – it’s probably up over 200,” Ponting told the broadcaster soon after the game. “I don’t need many of those games like that at my age of over 50 now.
“It just goes to show how funny a game it is,” Ponting informed JioHotstar after the match.
“Only three days ago we couldn’t defend 246 and here we are, defending 112 with 16 runs up our sleeves. We actually said to the guys at the halfway mark that really small chases like this are sometimes the hardest. The wicket wasn’t easy. You can see right through the game it was holding up,” he said.
“But what about Chahal tonight! How good a spell of bowling was that! We’ve actually put it on him a bit during the week. He had a fitness test before the game today with his shoulder injury that he picked up in the last game and I grabbed him at the warm-up, looked him in the eye and said, ‘Mate, are you OK?’ He said, ‘Coach, I’m 100% alright, let me out there’, and what a spell of bowling,” Ponting explained.
“Well, you can probably see the way we changed things up with the ball as well, with Marco [Jansen] taking the first over and [Xavier] Bartlett the second. Normally, it’s been a role for Arshdeep [Singh] with the brand new ball, but the match-ups tonight suggested that Jansen and Bartlett were better suited,” the former Australian captain said.
“But we just said that wins like this are always the sweetest ones. If we can pull this off, then this would be as good as a win most guys have probably been involved in. I’ve coached a lot of games in the IPL and that might just be about the best win that I’ve ever had.”
Ponting said his team’s batting, shot selection and decision-making were “all poor”, but what impressed him the most was how the team turned things around in the chase because their bowling, fielding and catching had been under the scanner for a few games. “Even if we had lost that game, I couldn’t have been more proud of the way we went about the second half,” Ponting said.
“But when I saw us take the field, we got a couple of wickets early on and what we’ve been lacking is a bit of belief with the ball and a bit of energy in the field, and that was there for everyone to see tonight. So if we had gone down in a really close one, I would have been telling the guys that I actually thought that that was a season-defining moment.”
For his part, Punjab Captain Shreyas Iyer said it was to express in words,” he said. “I was just backing my instincts. I saw the ball was turning a bit, asked Yuzi to control his breathing as much as possible because you know the wickets were important and we needed to be attacking,” he said.
“And thankfully, the right players were there at the right place. And yeah, see, I’m not able to talk. It’s tough to digest the victory and such victories actually benefit you at the end,” Shreyas said.
