Shreyas Iyer and Shashank Singh after finishing off the Punjab Kings innings. (PHOTO: Sportzpics)
With Punjab Kings opening their campaign in this year’s IPL with a 11-run win over Gujarat Titans at Ahmedabad on Tuesday night, the spotlight was on Kings’ captain playing a knock of x runs off. While Iyer missed his hundred, the 30-year-old earned praise for giving the strike to Shashank Singh and not thinking about his hundred in the game. Singh would score 23 runs off the six balls as Kings set a target of 244 runs for Titans. Kings then won the match by 11 runs and former Indian spinner Ravinchandran Ashwin heaped praise on Iyer’ selfless act. Ashwin also shared how if Punjab Kings would have ended on 233 with Shreyas scoring the hundred and Titans chasing the target, the bowlers would have been blamed.
“If Shreyas Iyer scored his hundred and PBKS ended with 233, and GT chased it down with a ball to spare, we would have blamed the bowlers for not defending the target. It is not like that now, 230 is not the new 180 in T20. It is a difference of 50 runs, imagine that. The scores have increased in the last ten years. To be very honest, Shreyas sacrificing his hundred could well have been the difference. Imagine what would have happened if he got the strike and went for the hundred. Whatever extra runs PBKS got, it was because of Shashank’s cameo,” Ashwin said on his Youtube channel Ash ki Baat.
Shreyas Iyer during the Indian Premier League (IPL 2025) match between Gujarat Titans and Punjab Kings at the Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad. (Photo: Sportzpics for IPL)
With all the teams playing one game each in the opening week of IPL and the first five matches seeing six scores in excess of 200, the pressure has been on the bowlers. The first five matches have also seen Sunrisers Hyderabad scoring IPL second highest score as they posted 286 for 6 against Rajasthan Royals last Sunday. Ashwin believes that a time has come when a bowler giving away 40 runs in his four over spell is being applauded. “We have reached a time when a bowler has a good spell giving away less runs even without wicket, he is a blue chip fund. A time will come where if a bowler conceded 40 off four overs, he will be applauded for it. I think it is not far, we are already there. Rashid Khan was hit for 20 runs in the 18th over, when did you last see that? He has not become a bad bowler overnight,” Ashwin said.
The spinner was picked up by Chennai Super Kings for 9.75 crore in the IPL mega auction last year and played his first game of this year’s IPL against Mumbai Indians. It was a close match where Chennai Super Kings won the match in the last over. Ashwin talked about MS Dhoni coming to bat in the penultimate over with four runs needed and the kind of atmosphere when Dhoni comes to bat. “When MS Dhoni came out to bat in Chennai, there was so much noise and chaos, that we forgot the situation of the game only. Obviously, MS Dhoni has earned the love. It was for the first time I was seeing that reception from the CSK dressing room, I always saw it from the outside. I was padded up, I was the next batter. I went inside and asked Ruturaj how the wicket is and all that because we still needed 4 runs, but everyone forgot that a match was on the line,” Ashwin said.
