Faf du Plessis:
We probably dropped Odean on 10, and he’s a really powerful hitter. You need to hold on to your chances. Cliche: catches win matches. Dew out there, small margins. Punjab had a really good powerplay. The ball skidded more in the second innings. I know what Odean Smith can do to you so you need to hold on to your chances. (on his own batting) I thought it was quite tough in the beginning. The ball was swinging. Pleasing to get through.”
Punjab Kings vs Royal Challengers Bangalore Highlights today, Sunday 27-3-2022. 3rd Match (N), Tata Indian Premier League from Dr DY Patil Sports Academy, Mumbai.
Toss: Punjab Kings chose to field.
Punjab Kings team: M Agarwal (c), S Dhawan, L Livingstone, B Rajapaksa (wk), O Smith, S Khan, R Bawa, A Singh, H Brar, S Sharma, R Chahar.
Royal Challengers Bangalore team: F Du Plessis (c), A Rawat, D Karthik (wk), S Rutherford, V Kohli, D Willey, W Hasaranga, S Ahamad, H Patel, M Siraj, A Deep.
Head to head
Total matches played: 28
PBKS Won: 15
RCB Won: 13
Bhanuka Rajapaksa:
(thinking at the start of batting) What we thought was that we would have a free hand. Wanindu is my team-mate and I knew how to handle him. Shikhar asked me to be aggressive even if I was new. It’s about knowing Wanindu and playing him. Know him for 4-5 years, just brought my local knowledge in. Such a big confidence booster for us. We had a theory. We wanted a movie called 14 peaks (about mountaineer Nirmal Purja who climbed the highest 14 mountains in the world inside a year) to get motivated. We gave 130 runs in the last 8-9 overs, that’s somewhere we can improve.”
Mayank Agarwal:
“Two points very important. A very good wicket for batting and we batted exceedingly well. It also became a lot easier to bat second due to dew. But credit to the way we finished – we held our nerves and took the right chances. Glad it came off. I thought we gave them 15-20 more. The way Faf and Virat batted, I thought they took the game away for us. It’s a lot to do with the batting depth but we trust the skills. We’ve made it clear in the dressing room that whoever is out there is good enough. If it doesn’t come off it doesn’t come off.
Odean Smith is the Player of the Match for his eight-ball 25:
“We were stressing on having a good start. It was all about the belief that once we had a good start we had the power in the back end. I didn’t go so well with the bowling, have a few stuff to work on. But from batting, it was good since I helped my team to get home. It was all about execution. My execution wasn’t on point with the ball, that’s why it went haywire. Punjab Kings haven’t won a title yet, so it’s all about belief at the start of the competition. We watched a motivational movie – 14 peaks. This was the first peak, 13 more to go.”
Match Timings: 14:00 GMT | 19:30 Local
Umpires – Anil Chaudhary, Nitin Menon
TV Umpires – Virender Sharma
Match Referee – Manu Nayyar
Reserve Umpire – Chirra Ravikanthreddy
Match number – Tata IPL 2022 – Seasone 15, 3rd Match
Well done pb..