|| Desk Report ||

KIngs XI Punjab lost to KKR convincingly by 7 wickets yesterday and their hope of reaching the playoff has gone. After the match Punjab's captain Ravichandran Ashwin pointed out that Injuries to key players, the ineffectiveness of their overseas fast bowlers, and an inability to win key moments in the Powerplay overs were the reasons behind the loss. 

"One of the areas we've definitely lacked is the Powerplay, both with the ball and the bat - in hindsight if we look at it. Because last year we had a great Powerplay batting with Chris [Gayle] and KL [Rahul] but this year we couldn't get off to great starts obviously because the pressure was on them and they had to do a job. But we have to address this going into the next year because we've lost most games on Powerplay battles," Ashwin stated. 

This year Punjab’s powerplay records are very disappointing. They failed to score quickly in the Powerplay and their bowling in the powerplays wasn't also up to the mark. They won most of their games in the middle overs or in the death overs. Injuries of Varun Chakravarthy (finger) and Mujeeb-ur-Rahman (shoulder) are also a big blow for them.  

Another thing is that their main bowling star Andrew Tye performed very abysmally in this year’s edition. They banked on him a lot because he was the winner of purple cap in the 2018 IPL edition. Tye took just three wickets in five outings and returned an economy rate of more than 10 per over. But Ashwin ensured that he tried really hard and expects that he will learn from this experience.  

Punjab scored 183 runs in their twenty overs, Kolkata chased that target successfully in 18 overs by losing only 3 wickets. Shubman Gill's 65 and Lynn's quick 46 runs out of 22 balls helped Kolkata to reach their target pretty easily. With this win Kolkata is left to fight an another day for the top four spot.