Ricky Ponting has made it very clear to his team and team owners that he will be running the show. His statement was a clear message for the team owners not to interfere. Ponting has also announced that he will be the central contact point for the players and the owners. Ponting conveyed his views rather succinctly and some clarity needed to be injected into the Punjab Kings’ set up. The owners can manage the financial matters alright, but managing the cricketing aspects is better left to the Coach. The PBKS owners do not interfere too much with the team managements’ decision making.
Now that Ponting has set a guideline and has a captain with whom he is keen to work with, the Punjab Kings have a chance to create history. They have started the campaign well, but they have slipped to the middle of the points table after losing to Sunrisers. KKR letting go of Shreyas Iyer has proved to be fortunate for the Punjab Kings, because this has resulted in Ponting and Iyer teaming up in the Punjab Kings team. There is obviously a lot of mutual respect and the keenness from both to work with each other. The Punjab Kings have got the composition of the squad right, which was not the case in the bygone years.
The current squad has a good mix of proven specialists and multidimensional cricketers thrown in with some exciting young talents. The captain, Shreyas Iyer, a specialist batter himself, has been in terrific nick this season for his team. He is striking at a great rate of around 200 and the other specialist batters have healthy strike rates too. But the flavor of the season for Punjab has been the young opener, Priyansh Arya. He is a young cub, but he has gone about attacking the bowlers with the ferocity of a lion. Lady luck favoured him while scoring that century against the CSK, but luck is one of the requisites for success.
While the batting unit of Punjab Kings has fired at a brisk pace, Glenn Maxwell has been quiet so far. But, he has been handy with the ball with his off spin on flat tracks. Nevertheless, the opposition sides will be wary of him because he is too good to be failing for too long. The other gap is the lack of consistency from Prabhsimran Singh at the top of the order. Ponting and Iyer have the option of replacing him with Inglis but this might disrupt the entire combination.
The bowling unit has been very efficient, led by the left arm seamer Arshadeep Singh. He keeps getting better all the time , as that is why he is so successful in international cricket. The Kings depend on their fast bowlers, but Chahal needs to play a big role for them later on. The pitches will become drier and tired, and as a result will provide some assistance to the spinners. The Punjab Kings have benefitted over the years by banking on one top quality spinner. Piyush Chawla performed well in the first few seasons of the IPL, and later on, Axar Patel did wonderfully well. The Kings are banking on Chahal now, but he needs to churn out better numbers.
The Punjab Kings look the part this season after 2014, but there is a lot of cricket still left to be played. The Kings have made a good start, but they need to keep the momentum going. The biggest advantage for the Kings is that both Iyer and Ponting have won titles at different levels. As such they are aware of the importance of emotional management. However, the team needs to improve its record at home in order to win the title. They have so far just managed a solitary win in the last 14 games that they played at home. CSK made Chepauk their fortress and that enabled them to win 5 titles. So, the importance of winning at home cannot be over emphasized.
The Kings have a great squad from which to field the appropriate playing eleven depending on the surfaces they get. They have lost the first game they played at home against the Rajasthan Royals. Shreyas Iyer conceded after that game that they need to assess the pitches at home better. The other option left for Iyer is to convince the curator to provide a pitch that will suit them. So far, the curators have stuck to their mandate and the guidelines issued to them. At least three teams have already expressed their displeasure about the rigid stance of the curators. It remains to be seen if the Punjab Kings get the surfaces they prefer at home. The other alternative for them is to prevail over thier opponents regardless of the nature of pitches provided at home.
The only aspect that could be in their way is hardcore experience
They can find the lack of experience hurt them somewhere