Australia’s Cooper Connolly has marked his Indian Premier League debut with an unbeaten half-century in Punjab Kings’ three-wicket win over Gujarat Titans.<\/p>\n
Batting at number three, the 22-year-old smashed 72 not out off 44 balls with five sixes and five fours as last year’s finalist survived a middle-order collapse to reach 7-165 with five balls to spare.<\/p>\n
Fast bowler Vijaykumar Vyshak (3-34) and experienced spinner Yuzvendra Chahal (2-28) had earlier bowled well in the middle overs to restrict Gujarat to 6-162 after Punjab captain Shreyas Iyer won the toss and elected to field.<\/p>\n
“I was looking forward to the experience of playing with some world-class players, but to put that performance in tonight, very happy,” Connolly said.<\/p>\n
“I’m just more of a tempo player, feel the flow of my hands, don’t hit too many big sixes.”<\/p>\n
Punjab had the chase under control at 2-110 in 12 overs before impact substitute Prasidh Krishna rattled the middle order with three wickets in 10 balls, and the home team slumped to 6-118 in the 15th over.<\/p>\n
But Connolly, who didn’t lose patience with wickets falling around him, provided Punjab a winning start to the tournament.<\/p>\n
Krishna ignited the collapse when Iyer clipped a straightforward catch to mid-wicket off the first ball he faced after he was struck hard on his hand as the non-striker by a hard drive from Connolly and needed on-field treatment.<\/p>\n
Shashank Singh was undone by a sharp short ball and got a faint edge behind the wicket, while Marcus Stoinis sliced a catch to Rashid Khan at third off another short delivery.<\/p>\n
Marco Jansen smashed a six but got deceived by a slower delivery from Gujarat debutant Ashok Sharma and offered a tame catch at covers with Punjab still needing 19 runs for victory.<\/p>\n
Xavier Bartlett (11 not out) eased the nerves when he pulled Krishna for a six over mid-wicket before Connolly guided Punjab to victory.<\/p>\n
Earlier, skipper Shubman Gill top-scored with 39 off 27 balls, but none of the top-order Gujarat batters could convert starts into meaningful knocks. Gill started off well with his fluent boundaries in the power play, but Gujarat got tied down after scoring 1-54 in the first six overs.<\/p>\n
Gill dominated Chahal early on with his trademark sweep shots before he got caught at mid-wicket while trying another sweep against the spinner, as Gujarat could not find momentum after the power play.<\/p>\n
Jos Buttler scored 38 off 33 balls, which included 14 dot balls, before he holed out to long-on at the start of the death overs.<\/p>\n
Punjab did well in the last five overs and allowed Gujarat to score only 34 runs with Jansen (1-20) intelligently varying his pace. Arshdeep Singh’s (0-42) long 11-ball last over went for 12 runs that included a no-ball and four wide balls.<\/p>\n
AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia’s Cooper Connolly has marked his Indian Premier League debut with an unbeaten half-century in Punjab Kings’ three-wicket…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,26808,740,165536,13849,13848,105215,85],"class_list":["post-577222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cooper-connolly","tag-cricket","tag-gujarat-titans","tag-indian-premier-league","tag-ipl","tag-punjab-kings","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}