Punjab Kings delivered a rousing fightback with the ball before a scintillating run-chase saw them chase down a daunting target of 220 to win by six wickets with seven balls to spare in their Tata IPL match against the Sunrisers Hyderabad at the Yadavindra Singh Stadium in Chandigarh on Saturday afternoon.
Openers Priyansha Arya (57 from 20 balls) and Prabhsimran Singh (51 off 25) added 93-0 in the Power Play with nine fours and nine sixes between them to lay the platform for captain Shreyas Iyer to complete a remarkable victory with a sublime, unbeaten 69 from just 33 balls with a quintet of fours and sixes.
But the bowlers were equally responsible for the victory after engineering a brilliant comeback to limit the Sunrisers to what seemed a modest total after Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma posted an eye-watering 105 without loss in the Power Play to set up a total closer to 240 or even 250.
Medium pacer Shashank Singh (3-0-20-2) snuffed out both halves of ‘Travishek’ with slower balls, which Head swatted to long on to depart for 38 from 23 balls, while Abhishek slapped his to deep cover for a rasping 74 from just 28 balls with five fours and eight dazzling sixes.
Captain Ishan Kishan’s breezy 27 from 17 balls ended with an absurdly unlikely one-handed catch by Marco Jansen on the midwicket boundary off Arshdeep Singh (2-50), leaving Heinrich Klaasen to continue his peculiarly slow-scoring in the tournament to date with a frustrating 39 from 33 balls containing just one four and one six.
Jansen (4-0-40-0) and Aussie Xavier Bartlett (4-0-42-1) delivered some critically parsimonious overs at the death and suddenly Punjab sensed the chance of victory of a chastening first quarter of the match. The innings decelerated to such an extent that just 50 runs accrued from the final six overs.
The fearless Punjab openers tore into the bowlers immediately with quicks Jaydev Unadkat (3-0-40-0) and Eshan Malinga (3-0-46-0) suffering initially before Harshal Patel endured the greatest bruising with his two overs scythed away dismissively for 39 runs.
Left-arm wrist-spinner Shivang Kumar was brave enough to give the ball air in search of wickets and was rewarded with 3-33, but there was nothing for the other bowlers to smile about.
Punjab remain unbeaten with three wins and a ‘no result’ from four matches, one point behind log-leaders Rajasthan Royals, who have eight points from four matches, while Sunrisers have just one win from their four matches.
PUNJAB KINGS: Priyansh Arya, Prabhsimran Singh (wkt), Cooper Connolly, Shreyas Iyer (captain), Shashank Singh, Marcus Stoinis, Marco Jansen, Xavier Bartlett, Vijaykumar Vyshak, Arshdeep Singh, Yuzvendra Chahal
SUNRISERS HYDERABAD: Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Ishan Kishan (captain/wkt), Heinrich Klaasen, Salil Arora, Aniket Verma, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Harsh Dubey, Shivang Kumar, Harshal Patel, Eshan Malinga