Punjab Kings were unable to defend 195 against the Delhi Capitals in their last game. PBKS skipper scored 61 off 51 balls in the high scoring encounter. Criticizing his knock, Akash Chopra claimed that Rahul would look back at his knock with regret as he didn’t finish off well, and his team fell a few runs short on the great batting strip.
In a high-scoring clash at the Wankhede Stadium, Punjab Kings were caught off guard by some incredible batting by Delhi Capitals’ batsmen, especially Shikhar Dhawan. Batting first, Punjab’s opening batsman Mayank Agarwal played a tremendous knock of 69 runs off just 36 deliveries.
Mayank, along with skipper KL Rahul added 122 runs in 12.4 overs in which Mayank took the aggressive route. Punjab was batting with a run rate of 10 and was expected to post 220 to 225 runs on the beautiful batting track. However, Mayank’s wicket in the 13th over resulted in a drastic drop in the scoring rate.
Rahul failed to accelerate after playing the anchor role and lost his wicket in the 16th over after making 61 runs off 51 deliveries. Towards the end, Deepak Hooda and Shahrukh Khan played quickfire-cameos as they scored 22 off 13 and 15 off 5.
However, Punjab Kings were at least 20-25 runs short of a winning total. Delhi Capitals won the match by six wickets with ten balls to spare. The former Indian cricketer Aakash Chopra opined that Rahul’s lack of aggression resulted in a loss for the team.
Further, Aakash held KL Rahul responsible for Punjab not adding a few runs more to the scoreboard in the death overs. He also believes that the skipper’s slow knock put pressure on other batsmen, resulting in their dismissal.
He claimed that Chris Gayle was also dismissed after Rahul wasn’t able to hit big.
“You wanted to score 60-70 runs in the last five overs. You didn’t score those many, and because of that, you didn’t reach around 220, where you should have probably reached,”
Aakash Chopra further added.
