The 2025 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is going like a dreamy run for the Punjab Kings, who are delivering back-to-back dominating performances. In four games so far, their only defeat came against Rajasthan Royals, where the entire team failed to click. However, in the previous match against Chennai Super Kings, Shreyas Iyer and co got back to the winning ways and clinched the victory by 18 runs. For CSK, it was yet another disappointing day as the five-time champions completely succumbed in all the departments.
Chasing 220, CSK put up a good fight and managed to score 201//5 in 20 overs. However, the biggest culprit of their defeat was their poor fielding. During PBKS' innings, CSK got a golden opportunity of dismissing Shashank Singh on 37 but a fielding blunder spoiled the plan.
In the 17th over, Shashank tried to play a slog-sweep on a tossed-up googly from Noor Ahmad but the ball found the top edge of the bat and went up in the air. Rachin Ravindra, who came running towards the cow corner, tried his best but ended up dropping the catch. However, it was not the end as he did an overthrow too which gave PBKS an extra run.
Seeing this, PBKS co-owner Preity Zinta failed to hide her excitement as she punched the air and jumped to celebrate the moment. On the other hand, CSK veteran MS Dhoni was visibly upset with the dropped catch and gave a disappointing look.
This blunder turned out to be costly for CSK as Shashank went to score 52* off 36 balls.
"When I went into bat, we were five down for 90-odd. My plan was to play with minimal risk and maximum reward. My role was to give more strike to Priyansh. The way he was batting, I knew if he bats close to 15-16 overs, we will be close to 200 and 200 was a par score on this surface. (On his mindset when he came into bat) When you enter the field, you don't think about the past performance or the future performance, it's just the bat and the ball, so my goal was to be on the wicket and maximise my scoring," Shashank told the host broadcasters after the match.
"In match one, when he played against GT, he showed glimpses. He does it for his state side, he is doing the same here at the highest level, I'm very happy for him, he is a very bright prospect for the country as well. We have a very good side, we take it match by match, the side looks very good on paper, we have to win those moments and stay in the present," he added.