It is a rarity that a team loses after putting on board a mammoth score like 245 but Punjab Kings had to endure a hard-to-digest defeat due to Abhishek Sharma's whirlwind knock of 141 off just 55 balls in their previous match against Sunrisers Hyderabad.
A helpless Shreyas Iyer, who himself smashed a 36-ball 82, could only laugh at the end of the match after watching his bowlers torn to shreds by Abhishek's blazing blade.
The carnage unfolded in Hyderabad, where the flat Uppal track resembles a 'national highway' where no total is safe.
On Tuesday, though, Punjab will play at their home in Mullanpur where the pitch is also conducive for batters and the team management needs to decide what kind of conditions it would prefer going forward.
In the two matches at Mullanpur, 200-plus scores were managed by team batting first.
The bowling unit's confidence must have been shaken, especially of the two spinners Yuzvendra Chahal and Glenn Maxwell, who gave away 96 runs in seven overs between them.
And herein lies the dilemma.
If Punjab goes for a flat deck, there is no guarantee that the bowling unit can defend anything in the 220 range, especially when KKR have the likes of Sunil Narine, Rinku Singh, and Venkatesh Iyer in their rank.
One piece of statistics that head coach Ricky Ponting wouldn't like to look at, is Punjab bowling unit's economy rate. None of the bowlers has gone below nine runs an over.
The usually dependable Chahal has gone for 11.13 runs per over in five games with only two wickets to show. The loopy leg-breaks, bowled wide outside the off stump, aren't working for him.
On the other hand, if Iyer and Ponting asks the curator to prepare a track ready where the ball would grip and offer uneven bounce, it could well boomerang on them.
In the KKR corner is the country's most improved T20 spinner Varun Chakravarthy, who loves to bowl on these kind of surfaces and Sunil Narine, who despite being past his prime, can be more than a handful in slower conditions.
KKR is a unit which can be equally dangerous on both flatter decks and the slow spin-friendly tracks since they have all their bases covered.
Also the severe thrashing they handed the Chennai Super King at Chepauk would have done a world of good to their confidence.
The Punjab Kings batting is heavily dependent on skipper Iyer (250 runs), who has scored three fifties in five games so far.
Priyansh Arya (194 runs) has been the find of the season. Nehal Wadhera (141 runs), Prabhsimran Singh (133 runs) and finisher Shashank Singh (108 runs) also give the team a lot of solidity.
Overseas recruits need to fire
But Punjab's weak link isn't their Indian players but the two Australians -- Glenn Maxwell (34 runs) and Marcus Stoinis (59 runs), who have not contributed with the bat much so far.
The team expects a lot more from them but facing Varun Chakravarthy and Narine would be a big challenge for the duo. Even Marco Jansen (ER of 11.33) has bowled way too many loose deliveries for his comfort.
Head-to-head record
After competing on 33 occasions, Kolkata Knight Riders have the upper hand, winning 21 games. Punjab Kings managed to win 12 matches.
However, in their last encounter in 2024, Punjab chased down a mammoth 261-run target with 8 balls remaining. Interestingly, Shreyas Iyer, now PBKS skipper was on the other side managing the Knight Riders.
Winning Probability:
The surface at the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium in Mullanpur offers advantage to batters. In the two earlier matches held here this season, three innings saw 200-plus scores.
However, both the matches were won by the team batting first.
While both the teams are strong and have already won three games each, Punjab has an issue with bowlers and out-of-form batters (specially foreign players). While KKR has deep batting line-up and comparatively better bowling unit.
In their last match, KKR's bowling unit contained CSK for just 103, where S Narine, M Ali, H Rana and Chakaravarthy shined. But PBKS unit failed to defend a mammoth target of 245 against SRH.
However, KKR had their bad days with the bat, while PBKS fared well. Out of their six matches, KKR's low score was the 116 vs MI, while Iyer-led Punjab's low score was 155/9 vs RR.
Overall, today's game would be tight with a slight edge to Ajinkya Rahane's side keeping in view their better bowling and deep batting.
Squads:
Punjab Kings: Shreyas Iyer (c), Yuzvendra Chahal, Arshdeep Singh, Marcus Stoinis, Nehal Wadhera, Glenn Maxwell, Vyshak Vijaykumar, Yash Thakur, Harpreet Brar, Vishnu Vinod, Marco Jansen, Lockie Ferguson, Josh Inglis, Xavier Bartlett, Kuldeep Sen, Pyla Avinash, Suryansh Shedge, Musheer Khan, Harnoor Pannu, Aaron Hardie, Priyansh Arya, Azmatullah Omarzai
Kolkata Knight Riders: Ajinkya Rahane (c), Rinku Singh, Quinton de Kock (wk), Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Rovman Powell, Manish Pandey, Luvnith Sisodia, Venkatesh Iyer, Anukul Roy, Moeen Ali, Ramandeep Singh, Andre Russell, Anrich Nortje, Vaibhav Arora, Mayank Markande, Spencer Johnson, Harshit Rana, Sunil Narine, Varun Chakravarthy and Chetan Sakariya.
Match starts: 7.30pm.
