IPL 2017 | Pune seal their playoff date against Mumbai Indians in style

05/14/2017

In a completely one-sided game, Rising Pune Supergiant secured the second spot on the table with a comfortable nine-wicket win over Kings XI Punjab at home today. The Supergiant bowled out Punjab for an embarrassing score of 73 before outscoring their rivals with 48 balls to spare.

Brief Scores: Kings XI Punjab 73/10 (Axar Patel 22, Wriddhiman Saha 13; Shardul Thakur 3/19, Daniel Christian 2/10) lost to Rising Pune Supergiant 78/1 (Ajinkya Rahane 34*, Rahul Tripathi 28; Axar Patel 1/13) by 9 wickets.

Fielding the same playing XI as the last game, Steve Smith won the toss for Rising Pune Supergiant and chose to bowl first. Meanwhile, Glenn Maxwell replaced Matt Henry with Eoin Morgan while Swapnil Singh came in for Manan Vohra.

Kings XI top order crumbles under pressure

In a must win game for Kings XI Punjab they got off to a nightmare start when Jaydev Unadkat removed Martin Guptill on the very first ball of the match. However, that was only a sign of things to come, as Shaun Marsh (10), Eoin Morgan (4), Rahul Tewatia (4), and Glenn Maxwell (0) all departed within the first six overs to leave the Punjab side in deep waters at 32/5. Axar Patel opted to go on the counter-attack instead of trying to build a sustainable partnership and even smashed Adam Zampa for 11 runs in the ninth over, which included one six. But ‘parity’ was restored in the next over as Daniel Christian had Wriddhiman Saha caught behind to leave the Kings at a meager 55/6 at the halfway stage of their innings.

Pune tighten the noose on Punjab’s playoff dream

Things did not get better for the visitors in the second half of their innings as Axar Patel’s 22-run innings was brought to an end by Christian as the Indian all-rounder nicked one straight into the hands of Dhoni with the scoreboard reflecting just 62 runs against Punjab’s name. After that, it was only a matter of time before the Pune batsmen were asked to chase down an embarrassingly low total. Swapnil Singh was the next player to depart a couple of overs later before Zampa wrapped up the innings by dismissing the two Sharmas, Ishant and Mohit, in the same over to give his side a target of just 74 runs to book a place in the qualifier against Mumbai.

Pune comfortably book playoff spot

Punjab knew that if they wanted to have any chance of making it to the playoffs they needed to pick up early wickets to put some pressure on the hosts. However, Ajinkya Rahane and Rahul Tripathi were in no mood to give the Kings even an inch. The duo scored at a brisk pace taking the score to 18 off three overs to make the result of the game a mere formality. Tripathi, however, seemed to be in a hurry as he hit Ishant for two boundaries in an over that leaked 12 runs before smashing Tewatia for a huge six over deep midwicket to bring the required run rate to a mere 2.53. However, his urgency got the better of him in the final over of the powerplay as he was cleaned up by Axar Patel, but with Pune at 43/1, there was no way back for Punjab. The incoming Steve Smith and Rahane decided not to risk their wickets at all and chased down the remainder of the score with 48 balls to spare. Pune will now take on Mumbai a team they did the double over this season, in the first qualifier on Tuesday, with the winner booking a place in the final of the tournament.