Punjab Kings (PBKS) suffered a four-wicket loss with four balls left in the innings at the hands of Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB). On a pitch that had enough for bowlers early on in the innings, first slip fielder Jonny Bairstow dropped Virat Kohli’s catch on the second ball bowled by Sam Curran. PBKS skipper Shikhar Dhawan feels it was the turning point of the game.
“Virat scored 70-odd runs and we dropped a catch of the class player, we paid the price. If we had taken that catch, the momentum would have come from the second ball. But we lost the momentum over there and then we paid the price for that,” Dhawan told the broadcasters after the defeat.
Dhawan who scored 45 runs from 37 balls before becoming Glenn Maxwell's second victim of the night, said that they were 10-15 runs shy after RCB skipper Faf du Plessis won the toss and opted to field first.
“It was a good game, we brought the game back and again we lost it. We scored 10-15 runs less, in the first six overs I played a bit slow. Those 10-15 runs cost us and the dropped catch as well,” the opener said.
Wicket was double paced
However, Dhawan said that it was not a typical M.Chinnaswamy stadium and the ball was stopping.
It looked good but it wasn't a very true wicket, it was stopping, bit of double bounce and turned as well. 70% coming good, 30% it was doing a bit. I am happy with my runs but I thought I could have played a bit more fast in the first six overs, that's the only thing I felt. We lost wickets as well, we lost two wickets continuously and that put pressure on us. At the end, that's the total we thought on this wicket.
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Dhawan lauds Brar
While Dhawan felt that the bowling effort could have been better, he lauded left-arm Harpreet Brar who took two wickets and conceded just 13 runs from his quota of four overs.
“The match went till the last over, at the end also we could have bowled a bit better. He's (Brar) bowling really well, especially bowling against left-handers, tremendous the way he soaked in the pressure and got us the breakthroughs,” the 38-year-old said.
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