Tasked with the responsibility of preventing Mumbai Indians from reaching the target of 214 runs, Punjab Kings pacer Arshdeep Singh struggled to repeat his death-bowling heroics in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 match on Wednesday. Arshdeep was taken apart by MI batters, including Suryakumar Yadav, Ishan Kishan, Tilak Varma, conceding a whopping 66 runs in just 3.5 overs. As the match ended in the favour of Rohit Sharma's MI, Arshdeep found himself trending on Twitter, with fans unleashing memes and jokes on the micro-blogging platform.
Courtesy of his disastrous performance against the 5-time champions Mumbai Indians, Arshdeep registered an unwanted record for conceding the most runs without bowling full quota of 4 overs in T20 match. The left-arm pacer delivered a total of 23 balls, conceding 66 runs, breaking the record of New Zealand's Ben Wheeler in the process. The Kiwi had conceded 64 runs in 3.1 overs against Australia in a T20 match back in 2018.
Speaking after the game, PBKS skipper Shikhar Dhawan didn't mince words as he admitted that the bowlers didn't bowl tighter lines, which helped MI batters in the chase.
"We started off quite well and thought that was a very good total but unfortunately we could not defend it. I feel that, of course Rishi bowled really well, but from the other end, we bowled outside the off stump quite a bit and we should have bowled on off in the powerplay. And then Ishan and Surya just took the game away.
"We should have bowled tighter lines. Because we saw the wicket and saw it's a very good wicket, we thought change of pace will work a lot and I feel Nathan bowled really well but other bowlers didn't step up today. There was dew on the field and the wicket got a bit better, I felt that if one spinner gets hit then it gets hard to contain runs," he said.
Following the defeat, PBKS are placed 7th in the points table with 5 wins in 10 matches.