After winning their first six games in IPL 2026, Punjab Kings (PBKS) have lost their next six games in a row and no longer have playoff qualification in their hands as well. They will have to win their final league-stage game against Lucknow Super Giants (LSG), and they hope other results go their way too. And, PBKS head coach Ricky Ponting opined on this.
“We were exceptional for our first seven or six games,” Ponting said, “then we had that washout against Kolkata Knight Riders, and I think from that moment on we’ve just been a little bit off and as I said they’re small things. They’re one or two balls or they’re an over here and there that quite conceivably, we could have won another three or four games, but we’ve only got ourselves to blame for that. We’re in the situation that we’re in as a result of not playing at our best over the last few weeks, but we’ve also got a very good idea of what our best cricket looks like and what it is and what we have to do to win tomorrow, and that’s all we can focus on.”
Unlike PBKS, LSG come into the game after having already been eliminated from the playoffs race. However, that could help them to be “fearless and daring” in the game as well.
“I mean they, Lucknow, going into tomorrow,” Ponting said, “apart from probably personal pride and pride for the franchise’s performance, they’ve really got nothing else to lose, so teams can be dangerous in that way. But we understand that, we know that, and that’s the way that I want my boys to play as well. I want us to be fearless and I want us to be daring, I want us to take the game on and not be worried about what might happen, the negative things that might happen in the game. It’s really important we focus on the positive things and what you can do as an individual player to make an impact on the game there and then.”
“The atmospheres remain very positive and very relaxed”, Ricky Ponting concluded. “I think the worst thing you can do in a situation like this is panic and worry about what tomorrow brings. You’ve just got to stick to what you know has worked for you in the past as a player and certainly as a coach and a group of coaches, that’s exactly what we’ve done. We’ve done our best to make sure that the environment’s stayed very positive and very relaxed and let the players just go about getting themselves prepared and ready for a game.”
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