Ricky Ponting, the head coach of Punjab Kings, on Sunday heaped praise on skipper Shreyas Iyer for taking the decision to promote Josh Inglis to one-down, a move prompted to counter the lengths bowled by Mayank Yadav. The decision proved effective, as he, along with Prabhsimran, powered Punjab Kings to a strong start despite losing Arya early. The duo put on a 48-run stand in 22 balls for the second wicket before Inglis departed. In that brief phase, Inglis smashed three sixes and a boundary off Mayank.
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Promoting Inglis was a move Shreyas came up with: Ponting
The Punjab Kings head coach revealed how Mayank Yadav's natural lengths fed into Inglis's pull shots and helped the side get off to a flier © BCCI/IPL
"It was actually a move that the captain came up with, and Shreyas thought, on that sort of a pitch, against that bowling attack, it would be the right thing to. If a wicket fell early, to send Inglis in. We felt that Mayank would bowl early on, and if you look at the way he bowls, he generally bowls reasonably short, and that's one of Inglis' great strengths. As you saw tonight, those pull shots were pretty amazing straight away.
"So, yeah, that was what the captain wanted to do. It then also allows us to have, you know, Iyer, Wadera and Shashank through the middle of the innings, which is what we thought would be crucial for us in tonight's game as well. It was probably a surprise call for LSG to see him go out, and it paid off for us tonight.
"Once we got off to a [flier] you know, I think we were 70-odd at the end of the power play, all the momentum was going with us, and you see with our batting, we've got someone like Azmatullah at number nine, so we bat really, really deep, It allows our top order to play with a lot of freedom, and they did that tonight."
Ponting also confessed that he had challenged both the openers of his team - Prabhsimran Singh and Priyansh Arya - with the task of scoring a century
