IPL 2022, SRH vs PBKS | We had to field better, says Bhuvneshwar Kumar

Punjab Kings defeated Sunrisers Hyderabad by 5 wickets to get the consolation win in the final league game of IPL 2022. Bhuvneshwar Kumar was the captain of the SRH team for the game after Kane Williamson was unavailable as he had gone back to New Zealand for the birth of his second child. Apart from the toss, nothing went SRH's way as they were unable to post a big total against Punjab Kings after batting first. They could only manage to score 157/8 on the back of a 43-run knock from Abhishek Sharma during the game.

Shikhar Dhawan and Jonny Bairstow started well as Punjab Kings looked to chase the total down. The platform provided by the top-order was capitalised on by Liam Livingstone as he smashed the SRH bowlers all around the ground during his unbeaten innings of 49 from 22 balls as he helped his team win the game with 5 wickets to spare.

SRH skipper was disappointed after the loss and talked about how his side could have done better with the bat and even during fielding in the post-match presentation. "I think we were a lot of runs short (with them winning with 5 overs left), but we had to field better, didn't take our chances and there were fumbles, but this was the last match of the season and that does have an effect. We won 5 on the bounce and had the momentum, but it didn't go our way and we pretty much lost all our matches in the second half of the tournament. We will have to look at our squad and the management will have to work out on the weaknesses ahead of the next season."

He also talked about the positive things that happened for the franchise this season. "Have had many positives, Umran Malik and Abhishek Sharma were the obvious positives, but we have a decent core of batting with Aiden Markram and Nicholas Pooran coming up pretty well. As for me, it was a challenging season with injuries hampering me, thought I did a decent job and will look to come back better in the next season".