IPL 2022: Jaiswal, Hetmyer carry RR to a solid win over PBKS

Rajasthan Royals climbed up to third place in the points table with a fabulous chase in a six-wicket win against the Punjab Kings in their Indian Premier League 2022 match at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai.

After electing to bat first, Punjab got off to a steady start thanks to Jonny Bairstow and Shikhar Dhawan, who put on 47 for the first wicket before Dhawan was dismissed.

But Bairstow, promoted once again to the top of the order, was in good form and made it count as he stroked his way to 56 off 40 balls. It was only his second fifty of IPL 2022 but if he can consistently find form, it will surely help his team in the coming games.

He wasn’t able to go on and at 119/4 after 14.4 overs, PBKS found themselves in a spot of bother. But that is when Jitesh Sharma (38 off 18) and Liam Livingstone came to the party for them. The duo put on 50 off 26 balls to give their team a nice boost towards the end.

Punjab finished with 189/5 and almost everyone thought that their batting unit had done very well indeed.

On the bowling front, Yuzvendra Chahal had another good outing. He ended up with figures of 3/28 in his four overs.

When RR came out to bat, they knew they needed a good start and that is exactly what they got from Yashasvi Jaiswal and Jos Buttler. The duo put on 46 for the first wicket in just 3.5 overs.

Buttler was then dismissed while trying to go for one shot too many but his 30 off 16 balls set the tone of the innings.

Jaiswal, who was coming back into the playing XI after spending a long time on the bench, then kept the momentum going with a brilliant 68 off 41 balls.

IPL 2022: Yashasvi Jaiswal, David Warner, Venkatesh Iyer and a question of faith

The best part of the RR innings was that their run-rate worm stayed ahead of the PBKS worm throughout the innings and in a big chase like this that is never easy to do.

After Buttler’s cameo at the top, skipper Sanju Samson (23 off 12) got some quick runs too and Shimron Hetmyer provided the finishing touch at the end with a 16-ball 31.

Devdutt Padikkal chipped in with 31 off 32 balls but given how the others were playing, he really didn’t need to go all out.

Arshdeep Singh (2/29) was once again impressive for Punjab but he didn’t find much support from the rest of the PBKS bowling line-up.