Rajasthan Royals on Tuesday pulled off a sensational win in the IPL against Punjab Kings with Kartik Tyagi bowling a dream last over to snatch a victory from the jaws of defeat.
Batting first, Rajasthan Royals made 185 all out in their quota of 20 overs with Singh claiming a five-wicket haul. Mohammed Shami picked up three wickets. Yashasvi Jaiswal was the top scorer for Rajasthan with a knock of 49 runs. Mahipal Lomror made 43 while Evin Lewis contributed with 36 runs.
Chasing a target of 186, Punjab Kings made an aggressive start with both Agarwal and KL Rahul adding 120 runs in a little over 11 overs for the first wicket. Agarwal made 67, while Rahul was unlucky to not miss his fifty by just one run.
However, their departure did not dampen the mood in the Punjab camp as Nicholas Pooran and Aiden Markram continued with the momentum and kept hitting boundaries at ease. But Pooran’s departure in the last over crushed the dreams for Punjab Kings, which needed just four runs in the last over, but ended up losing the match by two runs. This was largely due to Kartik Tyagi’s dream over as he picked up two Punjab batsmen while conceding just one run.
Speaking about his side’s loss, KL Rahul said, “Tough one to swallow. We need to see how we can handle pressure better. It’s happened to the best in the game. Tough one to swallow that you haven’t learnt from your previous mistakes. We bowled decent lengths in the first six. Unfortunate that edges got it away from us. But we pulled this back nicely with the ball.”
His Rajasthan Royals skipper Sanju Samson said, “Somewhere we had that fight left. We knew we had some special bowlers. Kept Mustafizur’s overs for the end. Tyagi was confident with his yorkers, especially wide yorkers. Executed them well against the new batters. And we had top fielding plans for every batter, we have planned till the last batter. We were happy with our score, on this wicket that was a good score. We are a better bowling and fielding team too. We could’ve won the game early if there weren’t drops early on.”
Tyagi was declared Man Of The Match for his impressive bowling.