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Punjab Kings produced an inch-perfect bowling effort, the cornerstone of their five-wicket victory over the Royal Challengers Bengaluru.
Under Shreyas Iyer, Punjab Kings have won five of their seven matches in IPL 2025 (Picture credit: AP)
Punjab Kings skipper Shreyas Iyer has said that it is nice to experience a massive variety of matches in IPL 2025, from low-scoring thrillers to high-scoring humdingers, as his side sailed to a five-wicket win over the Royal Challengers Bengaluru at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium on Friday.
Punjab produced an inch-perfect bowling effort, the cornerstone of their five-wicket win against the home side.
Punjab had to go through mild scares but passed the line in the 13th over of the paltry 96-run chase.
“As they say, variety is the spice of life. We can experience all kinds of games over here. It is a great challenge. There was no thinking, to be honest. I was making instinctive moves, and obviously, we were getting wickets,” Iyer said while speaking at the post-match presentation.
“I didn’t want the new batter to come in and settle straightaway. Marco was able to extract a little bit of bounce on this wicket. He was bowling lethally. He steadied the ship. And the rest of the bowlers helped him,” Iyer added.
Punjab’s last two games have been humdingers. They posted a massive 245 batting first against the Sunrisers Hyderabad at the latter’s home and would have thought of winning the game, before a scintillating century from Abhishek Sharma reduced them to an eight-wicket loss.
In their next game against defending champions Kolkata Knight Riders, Punjab were bowled out for a paltry 111 and while a loss looked imminent, a four-wicket haul from Yuzvendra Chahal bowled Kolkata out for just 95 to hand Punjab a 16-run win.
That was followed by a rain-curtailed game on Friday, with just 28 overs to be played. Punjab still managed to snatch a win.
“To be honest, we didn’t know how the wicket was going to play, and I feel the bowlers adapted according to it. When I had a chat with Arshdeep, he said that the hard length balls were very difficult to hit on this wicket because I didn’t see a single six off a fast bowler hit down the ground,” Iyer said.
PBKS play their next match against the Royal Challengers Bengaluru on Sunday, April 20, at home.
