The Punjab Kings, under the leadership of Jitesh Sharma, played their final match of the Indian Premier League 2024 (IPL 2024) against the Pat Cummins-led Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) on Sunday, May 19 at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad.
Batting first in the match, Punjab Kings’ top order displayed a batting masterclass. Prabhsimran Singh scored a brilliant 71 runs while Rilee Rossouw (49) and Atharva Taide (46) also made big contributions. In the end, Jitesh Sharma came up with a brilliant 32-run stand to help his team post a grand total of 214/5 on the board.
With the ball, Arshdeep Singh cleaned up Travis Head on the first ball but Abhishek Sharma and Rahul Tripathi played counter-attacking knocks to put pressure on PBKS. After that, PBKS bowlers continued to bowl poor lines and lengths and allowed SRH to chase the target in 19.1 overs.
After the match, Jitesh Sharma came out to talk to the commentators with a big smile on his face. Jitesh Sharma said that he enjoyed his debut as captain and praised his players for showing great fight in the match.
Jitesh Sharma also said that they played a good game despite the absence of many foreign cricketers in the XI. Jitesh Sharma explained:
“It was fun. The boys fought very hard and we enjoyed ourselves a lot. Good game without the foreign players. The argument will not help until it gets involved on the field. We have to play according to the wicket and plan accordingly.”
Meanwhile, with the 4-wicket loss against Sunrisers Hyderabad, Punjab Kings ended their IPL campaign on a low once again. They finished in ninth place in the 10-team points table, only above Mumbai Indians. In IPL 2024, PBKS won only 5 out of 14 games and had a poor net run rate of -0.353.
Why Jitesh Sharma led Punjab Kings in their last match of IPL 2024
Punjab Kings fielded a depleted team with only one foreigner, Rilee Rossouw, against Sunrisers Hyderabad because many players were not available for selection. Six foreign players in the team, including Sam Curran, Jonny Bairstow, Sikandar Raza, Liam Livingstone, Kagiso Rabada and Chris Woakes, were absent due to injury or international commitments.
Among those failures, the biggest was Sam Curran, who led the team in the current edition of the league for over a month in the absence of original captain Shikhar Dhawan. The veteran left-handed batsman suffered a shoulder injury while playing during the match against the Pat Cummins-led Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) on April 9 at the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium, Mullanpur, Chandigarh. Dhawan was expected to return to the team for their final two league matches but it did not happen.
As both Dhawan and Sam Curran were declared unavailable, the Punjab Kings management handed over the captaincy to star batsman and wicketkeeper Jitesh Sharma, who also attended the captains’ photo session before the start of the tournament.
