Rajasthan Royals have been highly successful in this season IPL 2024. They suddenly lost their form in later stages of 2023 but this time, they lost settled with one or the other player standing up to the task in every other game. They faced their first loss against GT in their previous match but they have found a hero in Shimron Hetmyer, this time, in a low scoring thriller against PBKS, Punjab Kings.
Bringing in Shimron Hetmyer for Jos Buttler proved to be a masterstroke for this game to RR. Earlier, they have won the toss and elected to field first on a bowling friendly Mullanpur pitch. PBKS rested their captain Shikhar Dhawan and brought in Atharva Taide. Sam Curran captained the team in this one. Jitesh Sharma(29) and Ashutosh Sharma(31) helped them to get to decent 147/8 in 20 overs.
Every RR bowler got wickets and bowled economically. RR rested Ravichandran Ashwin and decided to go with Keshav Maharaj and Rovman Powell. In the chase, Yashasvi Jaiswal(39) looked like single-handedly taking them to the winning shores. Tanush Kotian(24) struggled to score and Riyan Parag(23) got out at a wrong time. All others struggled to score runs freely.
When the going got tougher than ever Shimron Hetmyer scored 27 runs off 10 balls hitting 3 sixes and one boundary. His late bash helped RR reach the target and score 152/7 in 19.5 overs. Had he not found such touch in the last few balls, RR could have easily ended up losing to PBKS. Arshdeep Singh and Harshal Patel had rank bad days for PBKS and hence, the team lost in such a tight thriller.