'Will be a big pro-Kohli crowd...': PBKS coach gives big statement ahead of IPL 2025 final against RCB

The Punjab Kings (PBKS) defeated Mumbai Indians (MI) in the second qualifier by five wickets at the Narendra Modi stadium on Sunday to book their place in the IPL 2025 final where they will be facing-off against the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) on June 3 at the same venue.

Shreyas Iyer played a match-winning knock against MI

The star of the show for PBKS against MI was skipper Shreyas Iyer who played a stunning unbeaten knock of 87 runs from 41 deliveries to carry his side to the 204-run target in the 19th over. Alongside him, Josh Inglis and Nehal Wadhera also played key knocks of 38 and 48 respectively for the Punjab-based franchise as they qualified for the IPL final for the first time in 11 years and for only the second time in their history.

Following the big victory, PBKS bowling coach James Hopes stated that they have been setting themselves up to win the title for a couple of months now and added that they didn't want to settle for third place.

"We'd been setting ourselves up for a couple of months the way that we were playing not to come third. We wanted to be in there with the chance to come first and we've given ourselves that chance now," Hopes said after the win over MI.

He further said that the team needs to be ready for the massive pro-Virat Kohli crowd that will arrive in the stadium on the day of the final.

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"It's just a short turn around for us, we've finished at 2 am which is pretty late so tomorrow will be just about the guys recovering and getting mentally prepared for what I imagine is going to be a pretty big crowd and a pretty big pro Kohli crowd as well," Hopes added.

With PBKS joining RCB in the final, it is guaranteed that an eighth winner of the league will be crowned as both teams haven't registered a single IPL triumph so far in their history. A total of seven different teams have won the coveted IPL title so far.

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Earlier in the match between PBKS and MI, the Mumbai-based franchise managed to post a massive total of 203/6 in 20 overs thanks to valuable knocks from the likes of Jonny Bairstow (38), Tilak Varma (44), Suryakumar Yadav (44) and Naman Dhir (37).

The PBKS bowlers weren't able to use the overcast conditions in Ahmedabad to their advantage and proved to be quite costly against the MI batting order. Azmatullah Omarzai recorded the best figures out of any PBKS bowler with 2/43 while the likes of Kyle Jamieson, Yuzvendra Chahal, Vijay Kumar Vyshak and Marcus Stoinis took a scalp each.