Captain Shikhar Dhawan: ‘We scored well on a difficult pitch

KKR vs PBKS: Punjab Kings captain Shikhar Dhawan said after a five-wicket defeat against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) here on Monday in the Indian Premier League (IPL 2023) that his team Made a good score on a difficult pitch but the opposition team did better and won.

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KKR vs PBKS: Rinku Singh hit Arshdeep Singh on the last ball to win the team

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.

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Dhawan said after the match, “Not feeling well

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. In the end, they played well.”

Fast bowler, Arshdeep Singh had to stop KKR from scoring six runs in the final over to win. He took the match to the last ball but could not save his team from defeat.

Dhawan praised Arshdeep

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 to the very last ball. It was really good.

In the context of the opposition teams scoring big consistently, Dhawan said, “I think we do not 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.