Punjab Kings’ Head Coach Ricky Ponting receives an award during the presentation ceremony of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 final, at the Narendra Modi Stadium, in Ahmedabad, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. Royal Challengers Bengaluru won the championship. | Photo Credit: PTI Head coach Ricky Ponting conceded that Punjab Kings lacked little bit of experience in the middle order while batting second in a high-intensity IPL final against Royal Challengers Bengaluru but backed the team’s young players to come good in future. PBKS’ impressive run in the IPL came to an end with a six-run defeat to RCB in the final, with the latter ending their 18-year long wait to win the IPL trophy in Ahmedabad on Tuesday (June 3, 2025). Chasing 191, PBKS kept losing wickets in their chase and despite Shashank Singh’s (30-ball 61 not out) late onslaught, which included three fours and six sixes, they fell short. “You can look at it [the team] tonight and say was it probably a little bit of inexperience that cost us. Maybe, a little bit of experience in that middle order today might have helped us out,” Ponting told the media after the match. “But what I know is that they’re going to win us a lot of games going forward.” While the wicket here at the Narendra Modi Stadium remained conducive for batting, it was a little bit slower in certain phases of the game. Ponting, however, refused to give any “excuse”. “No, I don’t think so,” he said when asked if the pitch changed in the second half. “There are no excuses from us, no excuses from me, in fact, Shashank at the end of the game said [he thought] that’s the best wicket he has batted on for the whole season,” he said. “We just lost a bit of momentum at a critical time, probably the last couple of overs of the powerplay, you could feel that momentum just started to go away a little bit, and then [again] probably [in] the four or five overs outside the powerplay, we just lost momentum [and] we lost critical wickets, “They [RCB] probably felt they were a little bit short with the bat in the first innings, and we were pretty happy to be able to chase 190. But as I said, I’ll make no excuses, we just weren’t good enough,” Ponting added. Ponting said he would look back at the campaign with satisfaction. “I said in the first press conference I had with Shreyas (Iyer) in Mullanpur before the season started… it was about becoming a daring, dynamic and different team,” he said. “On the back of what Prabh [Prabhsimran Singh] and Priyansh [Arya] and [Nehal] Wadhera and these sort of guys were able to do, there’s probably enough being said through the media over the last couple of months. “The way that we’ve been able to play our cricket, it’s been a highly entertaining team to watch. For a coach to be able to sit back and talk about a team that way, [it] gives me a lot of satisfaction,” he said. Ponting said he emphasised on his batters to play with freedom and not worry about getting out over the course of the season. “One thing I’ve told this group is (that it is) always (about) taking the game forward, always seeing the positive result in the way that we go about it (and) not thinking about the negative result that might happen if you get out. “One thing as a batsman in this game [is that] you can’t be worried about getting out. If you’re worried about getting out, you can’t play the game well.” The former Australia skipper, however, rued the fact that PBKS did not have their preferred choice in South Africa’s Marco Jansen available for the last two matches while Australia’s Josh Hazlewood was available for RCB. South Africa and Australia are set to face-off in the final of the World Test Championship at Lord’s from June 11 and the Proteas players were instructed to leave by May 26 for the contest to be played at Lord’s. “It’s funny how those things work out, isn’t it? That to have him [Hazlewood] available pretty much for the whole season, and we’ve got a couple of guys that we would have loved to have had around for a big final like this and we weren’t able to have that happen,” he said, adding that Hazlewood in particular troubled Punjab batters throughout this season. Ponting said Punjab Kings will bounce back bigger and stronger next season. “It was only a couple of days [ago] that we were here celebrating one of our great wins of the season to get into the final, and today we probably feel that we’ve let one slip. But with this group being as young as it is, we’ll be back bigger and stronger next season,” he said. Published – June 04, 2025 11:00 am IST
