Despair at home is a familiar sentiment for Punjab Kings. But Dharamsala was shaping up to provide relief to a dismal record of 10 defeats out of 12 matches since 2023 once Chennai Super Kings were restricted to 167/9. Two balls, two absolute beauties hitting impeccable lengths, triggered an implosion no one could have predicted, definitely not in a season where Punjab Kings had already authored the highest successful IPL chase.

That too, when the first name on the board was Jonny Bairstow. Back of the length ball doesn’t usually get him worked up, but Tushar Deshpande also got the ball to jag back into Bairstow after pitching. “At high altitude, the ball does something,” said Deshpande later, “and my job was to take wickets.” Not anticipating the exaggerated movement, Bairstow played tentatively, missing the ball, which ricocheted off his pad onto his stumps.

The pitch was also slow, not subcontinent slow but two-paced enough to halt any batter on his tracks. Anything short though and it becomes a half-tracker. Not on Deshpande’s watch though. “If you hit the length hard, it was not easy to hit the horizontal bat shots so we just backed our length and kept it simple,” he explained. “Just tried to hit the top of off with the new ball.” He did that alright, but to Rilee Rossouw he made the ball to nip away. Rossouw wafted at it without any feet movement and found his off-stump flattened.

Punjab Kings should still have chased down 167. But this was a day when nothing went their way after a 53-run stand between Prabhsimran Singh and Shashank Singh for the third wicket. Even that wasn’t smooth sailing, partly because of Mitchell Santner’s stifling opening spell with Deshpande, and partly because Punjab just couldn’t connect their shots. Barring the top two and Rahul Chahar, the other six dismissals came off catches.

Three of them came off Ravindra Jadeja’s bowling. First to go was Prabhsimran, who couldn’t get enough distance with his shot after Jadeja took the pace off the ball. Lured into a slog with a delivery short and wide outside off, Sam Curran didn’t get enough elevation on it. Ashutosh Sharma probably aimed to clear the straight boundary but so awry was his hoick that it flew to short third. Partly responsible for this mindless attack was the way Simarjeet Singh was hustling Punjab with his scorching pace.

Bowling for the first time in competitive cricket since December 2022, Simarjeet could have had two wickets in two overs had Moeen Ali not dropped a sitter off Ashutosh. His first wicket of Jitesh Sharma however came at a crucial time too, considering this was the last specialist batting pair of Punjab Kings.

In hindsight, alternate overs of pace and slow bowling was probably the key to Punjab’s implosion, something CSK batters too had to face when Chahar was bowling. Removing Ruturaj Gaikwad and Shivam Dube off consecutive deliveries, Chahar put the brakes on CSK’s scoring before Harshal Patel repeated the feat, taking out Shardul Thakur and MS Dhoni off back-to-back deliveries. But between those two wobbles came a blazing 26-ball 43 by Jadeja that gave CSK a defendable total.

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