WATCH: Angry Reactions Of Ricky Ponting, Kuldeep Yadav After Catch Drop Of Livingstone: Delhi Capitals played the party-poopers for the Punjab Kings in Dharamsala by defeating them on Wednesday and hurting their playoff chances significantly.
Already out of the playoff contention, DC brought out their best with the bat. On the back of attacking performances from DC’s top 4 – the highest of which was Rilee Rossouw’s 82* off 37 balls with the help of 6 fours and 6 sixes – DC put up 213 runs on the board.
That seemed enough until DC dropped a couple of crucial catches, including that of Liam Livingstone, and missed running Livingstone out. The Englishman made DC pay heavily for those misses as he smoked 94 runs off 48 balls, clattering 5 fours and 9 sixes, to drag the game till the last over. However, the target proved just a bit too much for even Livingstone, and PBKS lost by 15 runs in the end.
Delhi Capitals head coach Ricky Ponting was left frustrated that two easy dropped catches – including one of Livingstone – and two missed run-out opportunities, including one of Livingstone.
Sitting in the dugout and observing all these school-boy mistakes from the professional DC players, Ponting buries his head in his hands and had a disappointed look on his face. Kuldeep Yadav, the bowler on whose bowling those two catches were dropped, screamed in anger after the second catch was dropped.
See pictures of Ricky Ponting and Kuldeep Yadav:
Ponting 😭 pic.twitter.com/opzCemt4tV
— SUPRVIRAT (@ishantraj51) May 17, 2023
• Livingstone dropped
• Atharva Taide dropped
• Taide's run out missed
• Livingstone's run out missedThe reaction of Ricky Ponting and Kuldeep Yadav says it all! pic.twitter.com/EPuv60mmOm
— Utsav 💙 (@utsav__45) May 17, 2023
• Livingstone dropped
• Atharva Taide dropped
• Taide's run out missed
• Livingstone's run out missedThe reaction of Ricky Ponting and Kuldeep Yadav says it all! pic.twitter.com/EPuv60mmOm
— Utsav 💙 (@utsav__45) May 17, 2023
Can Punjab Kings (PBKS) still reach playoffs?
With 12 points in 13 matches, Punjab Kings are still hanging by a thread in the playoff race. They need to win their last game by a big margin and hope for RCB, MI, to not go beyond 14 points and have their NRR less than PBKS.
Losing captain Shikhar Dhawan said: “It was frustrating. We didn’t bowl really well in the first six wickets, we should have taken some wickets the way it was swinging. It’s quite a close game, but can’t help it. There was hope after that no ball, Livi played a great knock, unfortunately we couldn’t end up on the other side. I fell my decision to bowl spin off the last over backfired.
“The momentum also went there. Before that, my fast bowlers got hit for 18-20 runs. Those two overs cost us the game. Our bowlers didn’t pitch the ball up in the powerplay. That was the plan and unfortunately they couldn’t execute. In this sort of a wicket, whether we take wickets or not, we should bowl at the right areas which we are not doing for quite a long time. That’s hurting us. Every powerplay, we have been giving 50-60 runs, we should be taking wickets as well. We knew that it’d swing for 1-2 overs. We lost the first wicket in the 2nd over, I got out and the 1st over was also a maiden – we lost six balls over there.”
