Punjab Kings captain Shikhar Dhawan said after his five-wicket defeat against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in the Indian Premier League here on Monday that his team posted a good total on a difficult pitch but the opposition team performed better and won. Did. Chasing Punjab’s target of 180, KKR rode on Nitish Rana (51), Andre Russell (42) and Jason Roy (38) to post 182 for five on the last ball. Rinku Singh (21 not out in 10 balls) gave victory to the team by hitting Arshdeep Singh for a four on the last ball. Russell hit three sixes and three fours in 23 balls.
Punjab had earlier shared a 53-run partnership for the fourth wicket with captain Shikhar Dhawan (57 off 47 balls, nine fours, one six) with Jitesh Sharma (21), Shahrukh Khan (21 not out in eight balls), Harpreet Brar. (17 not out in nine balls) and Rishi Dhawan (19 runs in 11 balls) scored 179 runs for seven wickets in flamboyant innings. For KKR, Varun Chakraborty (3/26) and Harshit Rana (2/33) kept Punjab from building big partnerships by taking wickets at regular intervals.
Dhawan said after the match, “Not feeling well. We lost the match and it was not an easy wicket to bat on and I think we scored well.He played well in the end.” Fast bowler Arshdeep Singh had to stop KKR from scoring six runs in the last over to win. He took the match till the last ball but could not save his team from defeat.
Dhawan lauded Arshdeep saying, “The last over was brilliant, great effort from Arshdeep and the way he came back after the last match, all credit goes to him. It was interesting that he took the match till the very last ball. It’s been really good.” Referring to the opposition teams scoring consistently, Dhawan said, “I think we don’t have a good off-spinner. When left-handed batsmen come in, we have a leg-spinner at one end and a left-arm spinner at the other end. So I think we are giving away a few more runs.
