Punjab Kings captain KL Rahul is hopeful to make a comeback stronger after the defeat to Chennai Super Kings in the Indian Premier League match on Friday. Punjab were completely outclassed by MS Dhoni’s CSK in all three departments as they won the match by 6 wickets after restricting PBKS to 106/8 in 20 overs. CSK chased down the total in just 15.4 overs to improve the NRR on the points table.
Rahul said it was always tough to catch up after losing the five wickets early and gave huge credit to Deepak Chahar and other CSK bowlers who bowled in the right channels
“There’s not much more to say. If any team loses five wickets in the first seven or eight overs, it’s always going to be catch up. They bowled well, we played some bad shots, that’s how the game goes. It (pitch) was a lot more sticky and tacky than what it looked like. Credit to the CSK bowlers, they bowled in the right channels, Deepak with his knuckle balls got a couple of wickets, getting myself run-out doesn’t help the team,” said Rahul after the match.
“Just the way we started, the pitch was still okay, it wasn’t a 100-110 wicket, maybe 150-160 sort of a wicket. But it’s a good learning for us, hopefully, we can learn from these mistakes and come back stronger in the next game. We have pace in our attack, we obviously want to use that,” he added.
The Punjab Kings skipper further talked about the new addition to their pace attack Jhye Richardson and Riley Meredith, who leaked runs in their first game against Rajasthan Royal but came back stronger against CSK. The Aussie duo didn’t get a wicket against the Yellow Army but they were economical unlike their first outing in IPL.
“The first game didn’t go too well for those two (Richardson and Meredith), it was their first game and I am sure they were a bit nervous. That was the chat after the game as well, that’s how IPL goes. It can be tough and cruel. Their plans were clear, they did execute it pretty well. It was good to see that they came back stronger this game and they gave us crucial breakthroughs. We’d like to review ourselves on the key points that we speak about before the game and if we stuck to those plans,” the PBKS skipper said.
Rahul gave a strong message after the defeat as he wants his team to take it on the chin and move forward in the league.
Last game we got 220, this game we couldn’t get even half of it. It’s important that we learn from our mistakes and that’s the sort of team we want to be. We still want to go out there and play fearless cricket. It’s T20 cricket, more often than not you’ll score big runs but there’ll be one or two games in a season where you lose wickets like this. It’s important that we take it on the chin and move forward and get better next game.
