IPL 2023 News: Nathan Ellis and Shikar Dhawan take Punjab Kings to their second victory

Dhawan and Prabhsimran take Punjab Kings off to a flyer in the powerplay

Rajasthan Royals won the toss and decided to bowl at Guwahati. Punjab Kings’ opening batters came out with positive intent. Prabhsimran and Shikhar Dhawan put together a 90-run partnership for the opening wicket. Prabhsimran Singh was brilliant with his knock of 60 off 34 balls and Dhawan played second fiddle and went on to achieve the feat of becoming only the third batter in the history of IPL to score 50 fifty-plus knocks. Punjab Kings posted 197/4 in their allotted 20 overs. 

The Rajasthan Royals’ bowlers were off their mark today

For RR, while the rest of the bowlers- Boult, Asif and Chahal were taken to the cleaners, Jason Holder and Ashwin bowled terrific spells stopping the momentum of the opposition in the middle overs besides scalping three wickets between them. Jason Holder picked up two wickets and was traffic in his lines and lengths today. Most of the bowlers struggled in the death and leaked a lot of runs.

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Ravi Ashwin walked out to open the batting but the strategy didn’t pay off

Ravi Ashwin opened the batting with Yashasvi Jaiswal instead of Jos Buttler. Jaiswal hammered the first ball of the chase for a six but the PBKS bowlers came back well. Arshdeep Singh dismissed both the openers without much on the board. Buttler came in at number three and scored 19 off 11 balls. Samson and Parag got quick runs while Padikkal struggled with a 21 off 26. With 74 runs needed off the final five overs, Jurel and Hetmyer hit some lusty blows and gave them a chance but it proved to be a very hard task in the end and Rajasthan Royals fell short of 5 runs.

Nathan Ellis bowls a fantastic spell and takes PBKS over the line

Nathan Ellis bowled a dream spell of 4-0-30-4 with the ball in hand as he dismantled the Rajasthan Royals batting line. He picked up the important wickets of Jos Buttler, Sanju Samson, Devdutt Padikkal and Riyan Parag, he was also on a hat trick at one point in the game. Ellis struck at crucial junctures of the match to push the home side onto the back foot. In a drama-filled run chase, Rajasthan Royals failed to get over the line, despite coming close to the target in the end. PBKS get back-to-back victories in the Indian Premier League 2023.