Punjab Kings head coach Ricky Ponting just about held his composure during the team’s clash against Sunrisers Hyderabad on Wednesday, May 6, as a string of dropped catches left him visibly frustrated.
Punjab’s ongoing fielding woes in the Indian Premier League 2026 season came back to haunt them yet again. The tipping point came in the space of just over three overs when Cooper Connolly, Shashank Singh, and Lockie Ferguson all spilled straightforward chances.
Ponting was brought in for a broadcast interview around the 10-over mark, moments after Connolly and Shashank had dropped catches off Ishan Kishan and Heinrich Klaasen. As he reacted to those misses, Ferguson put down yet another sitter at mid-wicket, midway through his interview.
“I am pretty close to throwing the microphone on the field,” Ponting said after the third dropped catch in quick succession.
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Connolly was the first offender, dropping Kishan in the eighth over, bowled by Ferguson when the batter was just on 9 runs. The chance at deep square-leg was straightforward.
In the following over, Shashank, who had built his name as a reliable presence in the last few seasons, put down a sitter off Yuzvendra Chahal at deep backward square leg. It was his fifth dropped catch in the last three matches, underlining a difficult run on the field.
Having just returned from a brief injury layoff, he was unable to shake off the pattern.
Moments later, during Ponting’s live interview, Ferguson handed Kishan another reprieve, this time on 18, compounding the team’s misery. Chahal could barely hide his disbelief and sunk to the ground.
The lapses came immediately after a strategic timeout during which Ponting had rushed onto the field to lift his side’s morale. In Chahal’s next over, Kishan was offered yet another life when wicketkeeper Prabhsimran Singh missed a stumping chance, leaving the bowler visibly distraught.
Ponting was not happy with the team’s effort and said that there were no excuses to drop these many chances in the field, especially after training under the lights the day before. However, the head coach was sympathetic towards Shashank Singh, who has simply not been able to catch a break this season.
“Look, it’s been a bit of a virus for us, to be honest. We’ve put a lot of catches down so far this season. The boys have worked exceptionally hard and poor old Shashank there, it just looks like the chances are following him around everywhere he goes. He’s sitting under a high ball,” Ponting said.
“He missed a couple of games with a left hamstring, so it’s taken him about a week and a half to come back from that. He’s done all his work over the last week to be physically right to play, and we have really ramped up the catching drills over the last five or six days,” Ponting added.
Kishan and Klaasen both made Punjab pay for their mistakes. Kishan added 55 runs to SRH’s team total, while Klaasen reached his fifty in just 32 balls as well.
SRH crossed the 200-run mark in just 17.1 overs helping the team set a big total at the Rajiv Gandhi Stadium on Wednesday, May 6.
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