IPL 2025: Punjab Kings’ Ricky Ponting lauds Nehal Wadhera and Shashank Singh for putting up fight vs Rajasthan Royals | Ipl News

With the ten- run win over Rajasthan Royals at Jaipur last evening, the Shreyas Iyer-led Punjab Kings ensured that the team reached the IPL play-offs after a gap of 11 years. Having scored eight wins in three matches with 17points, Punjab Kings are sitting at the third spot in points table with their two matches remaining. Having scored a total of 219 for 5 against Royals with half-centuries from Nehal Wadhera (70) and Shashank Singh (59), Punjab Kings restricted Rajasthan Royals to 209 for 7 to score their eighth win of the season. Punjab Kings head coach and former Australian captain Ricky Ponting has lauded Wadhera and Shashank for the fightback after Punjab Kings lost three wickets for 34 runs in the match.
“What you (Nehal Wadhera) did was manage to put pressure back on them straight away. You have to do that in this format, right? You had a great partnership with Shreyas. I actually said to him at one of the timeouts that because you’re so good, you can find a way to score runs, be out there in a partnership, and you ended up putting on 67 off 44 balls. Shashank, awesome again. Every time you have been confronted with something in the tournament, you have found a way to get it done,” Ponting told the team in his address in the dressing room.
With Rajasthan Royals scoring 76 runs for no loss in 4.4 during the run-chase, left-arm spinner Harpreet Brar took three wickets in his quota of four overs to peg back the Royals. Brar has so far taken seven wickets in this year’s IPL and the 29-year-old Punjab bowler has his best bowling figures of their year’s IPL to lay the path to Kings’ win. “You (Harpreet Brar) and Dubey have bowled more than anybody here over the last eight weeks. You put in the hard work, you get a chance, and it yields results. So, personally, all your teammates and coaches couldn’t be happier that you got the chance to make an impact, and you made an impact regering figures of 3/22 in 4 overs and grabbing all the big wickets. Well done!,” Ponting added in his speech.
Brar had come as an impact sub in the match and took the wickets of Vaibhav Suryavanshi in his first over followed the wickets of Yashasvi Jaiswal his third over and Riyan Parag in his last over of the innings. Brar talked about how Punjab Kings spin bowling coach Sunil Joshi helped him and the encouragement from Ponting. “Feels good. I want to dedicate this award to my wife. This is my first Player of the Match award after marriage. Ponting sir has motivated me, worked on a lot of things. My plans were clear – I knew they would look to attack me. The way the wicket was behaving, the way they were batting, I had only one thing in mind – not to give easy boundary balls. I have been working with Sunil Joshi for a few years. Taught me about using the crease, reading batters,” Brar said post the match.