Change of name seems to have no bearing on the newly-rechristened Punjab Kings as the northern outfit slumped to their third successive defeat with a nine-wicket drubbing at the hands of Sunrisers Hyderabad in Match 14 of IPL 2021 in Chennai on Wednesday.
Team's skipper KL Rahul earlier made his intentions clear that they want the match to be the start of a string of victories but the side's performance was all over the place as the team's core strength batting came a cropper with a contribution of 119 runs in 19.4 overs on the day.
Rahul, who couldn't contribute a good start on a sticky surface, blamed the defeat on the batsmen for not making the most out of the starts some of them had on the day despite knowing what the Chepauk pitch had to offer.
"It was tough to adapt but we knew, having watched the games, what to expect. We tried to get used to the conditions as quickly as we could but we were 10-15 runs short. A few batsmen got set and couldn't get those 30s-40s that could get us through," he said at the post-match presentation ceremony.
The team's bowling was disappointing on the day too as they couldn't put pressure on the SRH openers Jonny Bairstow and David Warner from the start and the duo went on to add 76 runs for the first wicket. Rahul felt a wicket early in the second innings could have set the game for them."
We knew that Jonny and David are their key batters, you know they're going to come hard. It's a little tricky to have attacking fields. Was hoping to get one of them and then attack, that was my thinking. Now looking back that could have been different," he said.
