Punter calls last night’s win the best he has ever coached throughout his duration as a head coach in his career.
Punter believes last night’s win might be the best win he’s ever had as coach in IPL.
Despite being an IPL coach since 2014, Ricky Ponting, the head coach of the Punjab Kings (PBKS), described Tuesday’s low-scoring thriller against the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) as “just about the best win that I’ve ever had” in his time as a coach. Ponting observed from the sidelines as PBKS won by 16 runs after defending 111, the lowest total ever defended in IPL history. It could be a “season-defining moment” to pull off a victory like this, mentioned Ponting.
“But what about [Yuzvendra] Chahal tonight! How good a spell of bowling was that! We’ve actually put it on him a bit during the week. He had a fitness test before the game today with his shoulder injury that he picked up in the last game and I grabbed him at the warm-up, looked him in the eye and said, ‘Mate, are you OK?’ He said, ‘Coach, I’m 100% alright, let me out there’, and what a spell of bowling.”
When asked what was the talk in the dressing room at the innings break, Ponting said: “Well, you can probably see the way we changed things up with the ball as well, with Marco [Jansen] taking the first over and [Xavier] Bartlett the second. Normally, it’s been a role for Arshdeep [Singh] with the brand new ball, but the match-ups tonight suggested that Jansen and Bartlett were better suited.
“But we just said that wins like this are always the sweetest ones. If we can pull this off, then this would be as good as a win most guys have probably been involved in. I’ve coached a lot of games in the IPL and that might just be about the best win that I’ve ever had.”