Shreyas Iyer wearing earpiece to talk to Ricky Ponting? PBKS' staggering tactics amaze experts, jests follow
So good was Shreyas Iyer's captaincy that experts said in a jest that he was wearing an earpiece to talk to PBKS head coach Ricky Ponting.
So brilliant was Shreyas Iyer with the bat in Punjab's IPL 2025 opener against Gujarat Titans in Ahmedabad that his impressive captaincy almost went unnoticed. Iyer's 42-ball 97* with nine sixes was, in many ways, a complete T20 innings. The fact that he selflessly told Shashank Singh to go for as many boundaries as possible towards the end of the PBKS innings when he was three runs short of his maiden IPL century added marshmallow to hot chocolate. But as it is the norm nowadays in the IPL, if a side muscles its way through a mammoth total, as PBKS did with 243/5, there is a high possibility that the opponents would give a good crack at it, exactly like GT did.
The difference here was the death bowling of the two sides. GT were slayed by Iyer and Shashank in the death overs. PBKS, on the other hand, were much better with their planning and execution. Vijaykumar Vyshak, Arshdeep Singh, and Marco Jansen did a tremendous job in minimising the big shots of Jos Buttler and Sherfane Rutherford. Much of the credit should also go to Captain Iyer for his sharp bowling changes, field placements and, above all, bringing Vyshak as the Impact Sub.
The popular idea would have been to bring left-arm spinner Harpreet Brar as the Impact Player. Besides being an experienced campaigner, Brar, a left-arm spinner, is a proven performer for PBKS, but Iyer and the PBKS think tank looked at the match situation. There was a considerable amount of dew on the field. It would have been extremely difficult for Brar to grip the ball and GT had left-hander Rutherford batting in the middle with Rahul Tewatia still to come.
In came Vyshak, a right-arm pacer, after the 13th over. He bowled three overs at the death for just 28 runs to shut the door on GT.
Did Shreyas Iyer wear an earpiece to talk to Ricky Ponting?
During a discussion on Cricbuzz about PBKS's impressive strategy, host Saiyyami Kher pointed out PBKS head coach Ricky Ponting's role.
"We saw captain Shreyas Iyer spending a lot of time in the boundary line because Ponting was talking to him in the ar all along; where to go, who to throw the ball to," she said.
"You think he (Iyer) was wearing an earpiece?" replied Harsha Bhogle in a jest.
Former England captain Michael Vaughan said Iyer deserves as much credit as the PBKS management.
"I wouldn't underestimate how much Shreyas knows about these tactics. A lot of these teams plan ahead of the game. He would have been sitting with the bowling coach, the bowlers to figure out the tactical aspects. They would have thought of going wide to the batters with a particular field," he added.
