MATCH STORY
Follow UsWhen Jonny Bairstow and Prabhsimran Singh walked out to bat for Punjab Kings (PBKS) in the second innings, no total over 260 had ever been chased in T20 history. For the Kings to get over the line, their batters needed to script history.
Pretty much no one gave the Kings a chance when the chance began — and for good reason — but in arguably the maddest two hours of hitting witnessed in cricket history, Punjab astonishingly got over the line with EIGHT balls to spare. That’s right, eight balls to spare, chasing 262 while losing all of TWO wickets.
‘World’s gone mad’, as they say.
In a way, it’s not surprising that it is PBKS of all teams that have pulled off this chase. They have, by some distance, been the most entertaining team to watch this season, in the sense that almost every single match of theirs has gone right down to the wire. So Punjab doing something ridiculous is pretty much in tune with how this season has been.
Still, the way they knocked down the target was bonkers. Especially considering the utterly horrendous form their top order was in heading into this particular clash.
Heading into the contest tonight against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), Punjab Kings’ Top four had been, by a country mile, the worst in the entire league. Across eight innings, PBKS’ top four batters had scored 593 runs at an average of 18.5 and a strike rate of 125.6.
You can see from the chart below just how bad the PBKS Top 4 batters were, before this contest.
Whether it was the law of averages, KKR’s bad luck or merely destiny, we don’t know. But something entered into the PBKS batters before the chase, and they walked out and brutalised the KKR bowlers like they were possessed.
Let’s just talk about the powerplay, yeah? The crazyyyy powerplay that laid the foundation for the chase.
In Bairstow and Prabhsimran, you had two batters woefully out of form walking together. Bairstow, who was just returning to the starting XI after getting dropped, was averaging 16.00 for the season. Prabhsimran was no better—he was averaging 19.25 and had no scores over 40.
Overall, Punjab, before April 26 (Friday), had the worst powerplay strike rate among all teams (130.6) in IPL 2024.
Under this kind of a backdrop, the Kings amassed 93 in the powerplay, the fourth-highest powerplay score in IPL HISTORY!
Prabhsimran went INSANE, flaying every single delivery bowled by the KKR bowlers. After managing just one run off his first three balls, Prabhsimran went 6 0 6 1 6 0 4 6 2 4 4 2 1 4 6 in his next 15 balls to bring up his fifty off 18 balls.
All this while, Bairstow was batting on 12 off 10 balls.
Because of Bairstow’s slow start, Punjab had *only* managed 69 off the first five overs, but the beast from Yorkshire flipped the script entirely by going 6 4 4 6 against Anukul Roy to take the score to 93/0 in 5.5 overs.
Out of nowhere, it almost became the perfect powerplay for the Kings. Almost.
For, tragedy ensued on the very final ball of the 1-6 phase, with Prabhsimran getting run out courtesy a stunning throw from Narine.
93/1 in 6 overs. Still great, but when you’re chasing 262, you need everything to go your way.
In its history, T20 cricket has witnessed far too many games where, despite a brisk start, a team loses its way in a mammoth chase after one key dismissal. It happened in the Delhi Capitals (DC) vs Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) clash where, after the dismissal of Jake Fraser-McGurk, DC, who were on course to chase the 267 set by SRH, collapsed inexplicably.
The PBKS chase today could easily have gone the same way after the dismissal of Prabhsimran. But it didn’t.
And that was completely due to Bairstow, who, post the Anukul Roy over, batted like his IPL 2019 self.
The right-hander clobbered everything that came his way, in trademark fashion, to bring KKR to their knees by the 12th over of the chase.
After 12 overs, Punjab were flying at 173/1, needing just 90 more off the remaining eight overs with nine wickets in hand.
They pretty much had the game in hand despite their number three, Rilee Rossouw, relatively struggling to get going, amassing just 26 off the first 15 balls of his innings.
The fact that PBKS were 70-30 favourites in the 12th over, despite Rossouw struggling, was a testament to the ludicrous knock Bairstow was playing. He was on 88* off 37 at the end of the 12th over; his last 25 balls had yielded a mind-boggling 77 runs.
Rossouw fell three balls later, and at this point, KKR felt they had a chance. The equation was still 85 off 45 balls, and the home side were potentially two good overs away from making the contest a 50-50 bout again.
To their dismay, in walked Shashank Singh to finish the job for good.
For eight games, PBKS had utilised Shashank exclusively in the lower order despite the right-hander doing everything in his power to show that he warranted a spot higher in the order. But after being hesitant for so long, Punjab finally pulled the trigger on Shashank in this particular contest.
It was alien territory for both the team and the batter, but the move ended up proving to be a masterstroke as the 32-year-old played arguably his best knock of the season to take the side home.
PBKS needed 85 runs when Shashank walked in; the right-hander ended up getting 68 of the runs, smashing eight humongous sixes in the process.
Shashank came in and ensured two things: a) Punjab Kings pulled off the biggest chase in T20 history, and b) This particular contest broke all sorts of six-hitting records.
The eight sixes hit by the right-hander towards the end turned this KKR-PBKS clash into the biggest six-fest in T20 history and also ensured that Punjab broke RCB’s 11-year record of most sixes hit by a side in a single IPL clash.
In the aftermath of the contest, Punjab Kings’ skipper Sam Curran said that ‘Cricket is turning into Baseball’.
Truth be told, it probably is. And tonight in Kolkata, we witnessed Punjab Kings hit the biggest home run witnessed in the sports history.
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