IPL 2023, RR VS PBKS: Punjab Kings Edge Past Rajasthan Royals in a Thriller

In the last-over thriller, Punjab Kings (PBKS) outclassed Rajasthan Royals (RR) to win match number eight of the ongoing IPL 2023 season by five runs at Royals’ second home ground- the Barsapara Cricket Stadium in Guwahati on Wednesday, April 5. With this win, Punjab now have four points to their name and goes up to the second position on the points table behind defending champions Gujarat Titans.

After being forced to bat first, Punjab openers took full advantage of the batting conditions early in the powerplay in Guwahati. Skipper Shikhar Dhawan and young Prabhsimran Singh took the attack to the Royals bowlers in the powerplay overs with the latter being the aggressor. Exhibiting his array of shots in the first six overs, Prabhsimran raced to his maiden IPL half-century in the eighth over. His fifty came off just 28 balls. In the tenth over, Prabhsimran got out after playing a knock of 60 off 34 balls.

As soon as Prabhsimran departed, Dhawan shifted his gears and started scoring more freely. Bhanuka Rajapaksa retired, but that didn’t have any impact on Punjab’s scoring rate. Young Jitesh Sharma didn’t allow pressure to mount on Dhawan as he played a small yet impactful cameo of 27(16) as he did in the last game as well. In the process, Dhawan completed his 50th fifty-plus score in the IPL. At the back end, Rajasthan tried to pull things back with some wickets in the death overs. However, they couldn’t prevent the team from reaching close to 200 and ended up scoring 197.

IPL 2023, RR VS PBKS: Punjab Bowlers Starred in the Second Innings

Batting second, chasing a target of 198 on a belter, the Royals batters were expected to come hard. The surprising moment in the game was when Ravichandran Ashwin came to open the innings with Yashasvi Jaiswal and not Jos Buttler. On the first ball of the innings, Jaiswal dispatched Sam Curran out of the ground. Bowling the second over, in-form pacer Arshdeep Singh required only three balls to dismiss the attacking left-handed batter.

In his next over, the left-arm seamer bounced out Ashwin to get the second wicket. Nathan Ellis dismissed Royals’ most important batter Jos Buttler in the last over of the powerplay to give a major blow to the Royals’ run chase.

Skipper Sanju Samson decided to take the onus of the chase on himself as he started collecting boundaries regularly in the middle overs. Ellis removed him in the 11th over to push back the Royals once again. It was Ellis’ night as he dismissed Riyan Parag and Devdutt Padikkal in the same over to register a maiden IPL four-fer. Shimron Hetmyer and impact player Dhruv Jurel kept the home side in the game till the last over but an unfortunate runout of the former mixed with a brilliant over from Sam Curran meant that RR fell short of the target by just five runs.