After the Punjab Kings secured the victory against the Lucknow Super Giants, there was a slight dig taken at Shashank Singh by his skipper. Shreyas Iyer covered the face of Shashank Singh with a cap, while shaking hands with the Punjab Kings’ players and staff. Shashank Singh had dropped catches and displayed possibly the worst fielding from his side. Ricky Ponting hugged Shashank and exchanged a few words with a smile on his face.

The Punjab Kings won by a comfortable margin of 54 runs and the dropped catches didn’t affect the game as much. It is fair to say that the Punjab Kings had won the game way before the last ball was bowled and that’s why Shashank Singh smiled it off. However, they would have a word with him in the dressing room as such sloppy fielding could cost games.

Shashank Singh’s costly drops overlooked as Punjab Kings cruise to victory  

The Lucknow Super Giants were coming off a terrible loss against the Royal Challengers Bengaluru as they couldn’t even reach the 150-mark. They were determined to turn their fortunes around against the in-form Punjab side. Prabhsimran Singh was dismissed early on by Mohammed Shami and they were charged up. Then came Cooper Connolly and Priyansh Arya with a record-breaking partnership and that was good enough to declare the result of the game. Then LSG fought back with quick wickets but the middle order dealt some handy blows and the Punjab Kings crossed the 250-run mark comfortably after the 20 overs.

In the 2nd innings of the game, there was an interesting change by the Lucknow side as they sent Ayush Badoni to open with Mitchell Marsh. They both got off to a decent start but with the total they were chasing it did not seem to be that good. Rishabh Pant looked like he regained his past form as he was hitting one-handed sixes but Arshdeep Singh got rid off him with a yorker. None of the batters looked like they could shift the momentum as they just had sparks here and there with a couple of blows from Mukul Choudhury and Aiden Markram as well.

In the 14th over of the match, Nicholas Pooran had mistimed a ball straight in the air and Shashank Singh made a mess of a simple catch and put it down. Shashank Singh’s miserable fielding continued in the 18th over when he misjudged a ball hit by Aiden Markram and the ball ended up landing straight on the boundary cushion. Ricky Ponting was absolutely livid with it and he straight away raised his hand in apology. An over later, Mukul Choudhury hit the ball up in the air and once again Shashank dropped it. The skipper was laughing it off as the game was already in hand but Ricky Ponting looked like he was in disbelief.

The Punjab Kings star did attract criticism from viewers but the franchise backed him as it just wasn’t his night. Had the result gone the other way or if it went down to the wire, we could have seen a slight recreation to the moment Shreyas Iyer and Shashank shared last year after the playoff against Mumbai Indians. But as the saying goes, “All is well that ends well”.