Punjab Kings travel to Lucknow needing two things: victory and a favour elsewhere. Six straight defeats have dragged them from top spot to the fringe of the play-offs, and Ricky Ponting isn’t hiding from the maths or the mistakes.
“We were exceptional for our first seven or six games,” Ponting said on match-eve. “Then we had that washout against Kolkata Knight Riders, and I think from that moment on we’ve just been a little bit off and as I said they’re small things. They’re one or two balls or they’re an over here and there that quite conceivably, we could have won another three or four games, but we’ve only got ourselves to blame for that.”
Those numbers are stark. PBKS started the season 6-0 in completed fixtures; since the abandoned night in Kolkata they have not won at all, sliding to 12 points with a net run-rate that may yet prove costly. In a tournament decided, at times, by decimal places, the head coach’s focus is on getting the big picture right first.
“We’re in the situation that we’re in as a result of not playing at our best over the last few weeks,” he admitted. “But we’ve also got a very good idea of what our best cricket looks like … and that’s all we can focus on.”
Lucknow Super Giants sit ninth, already out of the reckoning, yet recent form – three victories from their last four – suggests a side swinging freely. Playing without jeopardy can be awkward for an opponent who has everything to lose, and Ponting is wary.
“I mean they, Lucknow, going into tomorrow,” he noted, “apart from probably personal pride and pride for the franchise’s performance, they’ve really got nothing else to lose, so teams can be dangerous in that way.”
The remedy, he believes, is to beat LSG at their own liberated style. “I want us to be fearless and I want us to be daring, I want us to take the game on and not be worried about what might happen, the negative things that might happen in the game,” Ponting said. “It’s really important we focus on the positive things and what you can do as an individual player to make an impact on the game there and then.”
Internally, he insists nerves are under control. “The atmospheres remain very positive and very relaxed,” he said. “I think the worst thing you can do in a situation like this is panic and worry about what tomorrow brings. You’ve just got to stick to what you know has worked for you in the past as a player and certainly as a coach and a group of coaches, that’s exactly what we’ve done.”
For Punjab, the task is simple to describe if trickier to execute: beat Lucknow, ideally by a margin that lifts run-rate, then watch the table. A single over, as Ponting keeps reminding his squad, can tilt an entire campaign; an extra boundary, a tidier death spell, one cleaner piece of fielding. The fine margins that deserted them through May must return for one afternoon in Lucknow.
Should they find their early-season rhythm, Ponting believes the rest may yet look after itself. Fail, and the coach’s blunt assessment will read as an epitaph for 2026: “We’ve only got ourselves to blame.”
