STATS HIGHLIGHTS
Follow UsThis weekend belonged to the teams that were defending totals. Three successive games, teams defending a total have won the game in IPL and Punjab Kings today against Chennai Super Kings were one of the three.
A Livingstone blitz in the powerplay
When speaking about batting firepower, there isn’t a shortage for it in the Punjab batting outfit. Though they lost two wickets in the first two overs, they managed to score 73 runs in the first six overs. A huge chunk of credit has to go to Liam Livingstone.
Despite coming into bat at 14/2 in the second over of the innings, Livingstone didn’t go into a shell. Instead, he counter-punched and went after the bowlers. Livingstone scored 38 runs of just 15 balls at a strike rate of 253.3. Among batters who have batted 10+ balls in an innings against Chennai in the first six overs in IPL, only Dwayne Smith (257.1) in 2009 and David Warner (256.2) in 2015, had a better strike rate than him.
Mukesh goes for plenty
In the mayhem caused by Livingstone, Mukesh Choudhary was the biggest causality. In his first over (first over of the match), Mukesh conceded a boundary of the first ball and picked up the wicket of Mayank Agarwal in the second. Then he conceded 10 in his second over.
The major damage was done in his third over when he conceded 26 runs. At the end of his third over inside the powerplay, Mukesh had conceded 44 runs, which is the joint costliest spell by a bowler inside the first six overs alongside Albie Morkel (0/44) in 2008. Interestingly, the top three out of the five are from Chennai.
Punjab bowlers off to an exceptional start
Kagiso Rabada started the proceedings by dismissing Ruturaj Gaikwad in the second over. There on, the debutant, Vaibhav Arora took it forward. He dismissed Robin Uthappa for 13 and Moeen Ali for a two-ball duck. Arshdeep Singh joined the party after he dismissed the Chennai skipper, Ravindra Jadeja in the last over of the powerplay. Chennai were reduced to 27/4 at the end of six overs. This was the best powerplay performance by the Punjab bowlers in the history of IPL.
A horrendous start for Chennai
The defending champions are off to their worst possible start in the 2022 edition of the IPL. Prior to the start of this match, when they had lost their second match against Lucknow Super Giants, it was the first time they had lost their first two matches of an IPL season.
In their third match, the nightmare didn’t stop as they went on to lose their third in succession. They became the eighth team in the IPL to lose the first three matches of a season. As the defending champs, they are the second team after Mumbai Indians in 2014 and 2018, to lose the first three encounters.
Also, Ravindra Jadeja became the third Indian captain after Harbhajan Singh for Mumbai Indians and VVS Laxman for the now-defunct Deccan Chargers in 2008, to lose their first three matches as captain.
Chennai’s heavy defeat
With their prime batters not scoring runs, Chennai are in a deep pit of imbalance in the first three matches of this edition.
Apart from Shivam Dube (57 off 30 balls), none of the batsmen got going and as a result, Chennai succumbed to a score of 126 and handed Punjab a win by 54 runs. In the IPL, this is their second largest defeat in terms of runs. Their largest came against Mumbai in 2013 when they lost by 60 runs.
Livingstone everywhere
It was “Liam Livingstone’s day out”. Performance with the bat, wickets with the ball and catches in the field. After scoring 60 with the bat, Livingstone bagged two wickets and was on a hat-trick at one stage. To go with it, he pouched two catches, one of his own bowling and another one at long-on. In the IPL, he is only the fourth player to hit a fifty, pick up two wickets and two catches in a match. Andre Russell has featured twice in this achievement (2015 vs Punjab and 2019 vs Mumbai).
