Punjab Kings (PBKS) suffered their third loss of the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) season after a below-par performance against the in-form Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) in Mumbai on Sunday (April 17). In the absence of captain Mayank Agarwal, Punjab were unable to take control of their batting innings, and stand-in skipper Shikhar Dhawan felt his team needed 30-40 more runs to stay in the game.
"We were 30-40 runs short and lost too many early wickets which put us behind the game. The early wickets meant we had to hold wickets and that's where we had to mould our game. There was a middle-order recovery but the early wickets cost us. The wicket had extra bounce to which we were late to adjust," the southpaw said at the post-match press conference.
If not for Englishman Liam Livingstone, PBKS would have suffered an even bigger loss. The 28-year-old batting all-rounder hit a brilliant 33-ball 60 as Punjab posted a total of 152 for their opponents to chase. In response, the SRH batters played a cool innings as Rahul Tripathi (34), Aiden Markram (41) and Nicholas Pooran (35) led their team to a fourth straight win.
With three wins and three losses in six games this season, Punjab have slipped down the points table to seventh. Talking about their plans for the future games, Dhawan explained, "The discussion with the batting will be to save wickets till the 13th-14th over, the bowlers are doing well. We need to put up complete performances and hopefully, a 3-4 game turnaround which can change a season will come in."
He also provided an update on Mayank's absence for Sunday's match, "Mayank is better and he should be ready to be back (for the next game)." The PBKS skipper hit a 32-ball 52 during their side's 12-run win over the Mumbai Indians (MI) on April 13.
