Punjab Kings’ six-wicket defeat in opposition to the Gujarat Titans on the IS Bindra Stadium in Mohali was its second consecutive lack of IPL 2023.
It will tackle a high-flying Lucknow Super Giants subsequent on Saturday. But earlier than this away fixture, Shikhar Dhawan’s males want to deal with their excessive dot-ball rely.
Against the Titans, Punjab had a staggering 54 dots in its innings, that’s 9 out of 20 overs gone with out scoring. Gujarat, in the meantime, had 34 dot balls.
The lacking hyperlink for PBKS had been those and twos as soon as the sphere unfold out, and people boundaries weren’t available. PBKS had 38 singles in comparison with GT’s 52 and 5 twos to GT’s 10.
What’s fascinating is Punjab’s boundary rely of 21 (16 fours and 5 sixes), which was greater than Gujarat’s 18 (17 fours and one six). Had Punjab managed to transform even half of these 54 dots into ones and twos, it might’ve ended up with an above-par rating.
Punjab has at the moment confronted the very best variety of dot balls on this 12 months’s IPL, at 203, and has additionally confronted the very best variety of dots between overs 7 and 16 (93), which places into perspective its batting woes when the top-order struggles to get off to a flying begin.
Even if one takes under consideration the premise that there might be various levels of problem in strike rotation primarily based on the venue, PBKS’s excessive dot-ball proportion in opposition to GT was exhausting to justify on condition that the match was performed on pitch quantity 5 – there are eight pitches on the Mohali sq. – which meant there was a big sq. boundary on one facet (74m) for the batters to position the ball within the gaps and run.
The working between wickets will assume extra significance on Saturday if Lucknow produces a difficult, two-paced black-soil floor the place shot-making is tough.
Source: sportstar.thehindu.com