PBKS lost Qualifier 1 to RCB in their home ground. The target of 102 wasn’t going to be that much threatening for RCB batters. RCB had come out all guns blazing and won the match by 8 wickets with 10 overs left.RCB became Qualified for the finals as the first team in IPL 2025. Let’s look at the key areas in which PBKS couldn’t compete that much in a high-scoring match.
Batting collapse
The wicket had a bit of assistance for the fast bowlers initially. PBKS batters didn’t read it well and lost their wickets due to poor shot selection. They lost 4 wickets inside the powerplay ( 38/4 in 5.1 ) and could never recover from that.
All 4 of them are soft dismissals. Shreyas Iyer doesn’t have a great record against Josh Hazlewood in T20s, and he still went for a cross-batted shot in his first over and was caught behind by Jitesh Sharma.
Josh Inglis got trapped with the extra bounce and was caught by Bhuvaneshwar Kumar in the deep square-leg.
Prabhsimran Singh played a nothing shot in a wide outside off stump delivery, and was caught in the deep third-man by Bhuveneshwar Kumar.
Priyansh Arya was caught at covers by Krunal Pandya. Both Marcus Stoinis and Shashank Singh couldn’t pick the googly of Suyash Sharma and were clean bowled against him. Musheer Khan was brought in as an impact sub when they already had Azmatullah Omarzai in the lineup. That was considered a defensive move as they went one bowler short because of that. Musheer couldn’t deliver under the pressure as he tried to sweep his third ball against Suyash and got LBW.
Every batter coming into the crease was trying to attack and score boundaries irrespective of the situation. One of them should have taken the backfoot and tried to play the anchor role on this tricky pitch. Sadly, no one was there to do that PBKS yesterday, and their innings lasted for only 85 deliveries. They were all out for 101 runs in 14.1 overs.
PBKS’ bowlers lost the momentum
PBKS bowlers had a target of 102 to defend. They saw that the pitch gave some bounce, and bowlers got purchase when they bowled at the right areas. They had the two best new-ball bowlers, Arshdeep Singh and Kyle Jamieson. Even their one change bowler, Azmatullah Omarzai, could move the ball.
All they had to do was come and hit the test match length for the first 4 overs. But, they failed to execute it. Arshdeep bowled a bouncer to Virat in the first over and got smashed for a boundary. He tried to swing the ball from the middle and leg stump, which went as easily as picking for the openers.
Kyle Jamieson was also trying to swing it from the leg stump in his first over. RCB smashed 30 runs in the first 3 overs. Arshdeep went for 20 runs in his 2 overs. He tried the same short-ball tactic against Phil Salt and got smashed for a boundary and six.
Jamieson came to bowl the 4th over and made everyone feel like watching a test match for one over. He nailed 6 balls at the 4th stump length and got the wicket of big fish Virat Kohli ( 12 off 12 ) in the second ball. Mayank Agarwal had no clue in the next 4 balls he faced, and Jamieson made him dance to his moves. It was a wicket maiden.
Those 6 balls of the bowling of Kyle Jamieson were the only time PBKS looked like coming back in the game. Jamieson bowled the last over of the powerplay and went for 21 runs. The match was done and dusted right there as RCB ended the powerplay with 61 runs for the loss of just one wicket.
The ball stopped seeming much, and Jamieson went back to his short balls and targeting into the body, and got smashed for boundaries. After that, the chase became a cakewalk for RCB as they finished the match in the next 4 overs.
Also Read:Â RCB vs PBKS: Josh Hazlewood’s 3-Wicket Haul Destroys PBKS & RCB Reach Final