Punjab Kings captain Mayank Agarwal expressed his utter disappointment after his team was blown away by the Delhi Capitals on Wednesday evening at the Brabourne Stadium, Mumbai.
DC were forced to be without Mitchell Marsh and Tim Seifert as both are down with covid-19. However, they didn’t miss them at all as the bowlers first bundled out PBKS for 115. The Capitals chased down this in just 10.3 overs with 9 wickets in hand courtesy of a 39-ball 83-run opening stand between Prithvi Shaw and David Warner that decimated the Punjab bowlers.
“A day to forget and move on”
Mayank Agarwal #SaddaPunjab #IPL2022 #DCvPBKS #PunjabKings #ਸਾਡਾਪੰਜਾਬ pic.twitter.com/Up14ByIERk
— Punjab Kings (@PunjabKingsIPL) April 20, 2022
Mayank Agarwal Agarwal wants to forget this game as quickly as possible – that’d be difficult to do given their next game is four days later.
Speaking at the post-match presentation, he simply said: “It’s a tough one, a day to forget for us, best to move on and not think too much into the game. We didn’t bat and bowl well, we just need to move on from today.”
Put in to bat first, however, Punjab did get off to a brisk start with Agarwal taking the onus to attack the DC pacers as PBKS reduced to 27 in the first three overs before their innings fell apart with Shikhar Dhawan’s dismissal.
In the next over, Mustafizur dismissed Agarwal with a chop on and the procession followed throughout their innings. Youngster Jitesh Sharma was their top scorer with 32 off 23 balls.
The Capitals spinners – Lalit, Axar, and Kuldeep – shared 6 wickets between them. Such was the plight of the PBKS batters today, that it was Rahul Chahar who hit the first and only six of Punjab’s innings.
Let’s give it our all with the ball.#SaddaPunjab #PunjabKings #DCvPBKS #IPL2022 #ਸਾਡਾਪੰਜਾਬ pic.twitter.com/wMjeoZ4hee
— Punjab Kings (@PunjabKingsIPL) April 20, 2022
Agarwal said it is a concerning factor that this has been a pattern from his side that they have been losing early wickets regularly, while batting with their gung-ho approach.
“We have been losing too many wickets too early, that’s a concern. Don’t want to dwell too much, if we do so, a lot of negatives will come out. A total of around 180 could have been competitive,” he added.
Any hopes of a Punjab miracle were quashed away sooner than Agarwal could ring in bowling changes as Shaw and Warner hammered 58 runs from the first four overs – bowled two each by Vaibhav Arora and Kagiso Rabada – and the game was completely gone by then.
“In hindsight, I could have given a couple of overs early for the spinners, but I didn’t do so,” Agarwal conceded.
Such was the size of victory by DC that PBKS, now down at the 8th position in the points table, have their net run rate nosedive to -0.562 while DC’s jumped to +0.942 – the best in the tournament at the moment.
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