‘This is unbelievable’ – Sunil Gavaskar shocked over PBKS’ shot selection against RCB in Qualifier 1

Sunil Gavaskar could not believe his eyes in the commentary box, as he saw the pavilion parade of the PBKS batters in Qualifier 1 against RCB. On air, the veteran commentator criticized the batters who played poor shots to get dismissed, the most striking being the dismissal of Marcus Stoinis, who was batting well in the middle before getting out.

The star all-rounder was on 26(16) before being undone by a googly from Suyash Sharma. The fact that Stoinis went for a lofted shot against a highly turning googly shocked Gavaskar, who claimed it to be an unbelievable shot for the wrong reasons and described it as equivalent to committing suicide.

“This is unbelievable. This is committing suicide, isn’t it?” said Gavaskar on-air. In the post-match talk, Shreyas Iyer agreed that their batting cost them the match. The PBKS skipper noted that there is a bit of extra bounce in the Mullanpur surface usually, and the batters had to deal with it accordingly. He claimed that they lost the battle but the war was not over.

“We’ve got to work on our batting, especially on this wicket. In all the games we have played here, there has been some variable bounce. We can’t give such reasons because we are professionals at the end of the day, and we have to bat according to the situation, and we have to live up to it. We have lost the battle but not the war,” Iyer said.

Iyer added that they lost a lot of wickets early but there was not a lot of things that went wrong in terms of their planning. He claimed that the execution from the batters was wrong and felt the bowlers could not be blamed for not defending a low total.

“Not a day to forget, but got to go back to the drawing board. We lost a lot of wickets (in the first innings). There’s a lot to go back and study on. I am not doubting my decisions to be honest. Whatever we did in terms of planning, outside of the ground, or whatever (planning) we did, I think it was on point. Just that we couldn’t execute it on the field, can’t even blame the bowlers, as it was a low total to defend,” the PBKS skipper added.