File photo of Virender Sehwag
Punjab Kings continue to reel among the bottom sides of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 after losing yet another contest, to last year’s runners-up Gujarat Titans on Sunday. With primary skipper Shikhar Dhawan absent, Sam Curran took over the reins and promoted him at the top of the batting order. But the English all-rounder barely managed to click, scoring just 20 runs from 19 balls. Even with the ball Curran couldn’t do much, leaking 18 runs in 2 overs as Gujarat Titans chased down the target of 143 runs with ease.
Reflecting on Curran’s performances for PBKS, former India and Punjab Kings batter Virender Sehwag heavily criticized the English all-rounder. Sehwag, in his unfiltered criticism, said that he wouldn’t have Curran in his team at all.
“I wouldn’t keep Sam Curran as a batting all-rounder or a bowling all-rounder. Because such a player is of no use, who does some batting and some bowling. Either you win the game with your batting or win the game with your bowling. Either you hit the bullseye or you don’t perform at all,” said Sehwag on Cricbuzz.
Punjab Kings have struggled almost the entire campaign so far, be it with respect to their bowling unit or batting. After the defeat against Gujarat, Curran admitted that his side now has to win every game remaining in order to go through to the playoffs.
“I think so (we were 10-15 short). The effort with the ball was incredible, the commitment and fight was amazing, but it was not enough. The Afghanistan spinners are world class bowlers and Sai Kishore bowled really well, credit to them. That is the third time we have used that pitch, anything above 160 would have been a par total but we still fought well. Prabhsimran played really well in the powerplay but unfortunately we lost a cluster of wickets after that. Now we know what to do, we have to win every game,” he said after the match.
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