Punjab Kings clinched a nerve-racking victory over Kolkata Knight Riders on Tuesday in Chandigarh, successfully defending the lowest IPL total. Chasing 112 to win, KKR were in complete dominance of the game until Yuzvendra Chahal tore through their batting lineup, triggering a massive collapse of seven wickets for 23 runs. KKR, who lost the momentum with a series of wickets, were bowled out for 95 in 15.1 overs. After the match, Punjab’s head coach, Ricky Ponting, was full of praise for the team’s performance. 

"The heart rate still up a bit for me - it's probably up over 200. I don't need many of those games like that at my age of over 50 now,” Ponting told the broadcasters. 

"It just goes to show how funny a game it is. Only three days ago we couldn’t defend 246 [245], and here we are, defending 112 [111] with 16 runs up our sleeves. We actually said to the guys at the halfway mark that really small chases like this are sometimes the hardest. The wicket wasn't easy. You can see right through the game it was holding up."

"But what about [Yuzvendra] Chahal tonight! How good a spell of bowling was that! We've actually put it on him a bit during the week. He had a fitness test before the game today with his shoulder injury that he picked up in the last game and I grabbed him at the warm-up, looked him in the eye and said, 'Mate, are you OK?' He said, 'Coach, I'm 100% alright; let me out there,' and what a spell of bowling."

Ponting further lauded the team for the way they turned the screw despite failing in their batting efforts. 

"Even if we had lost that game, I couldn't have been more proud of the way we went about the second half. But when I saw us take the field, we got a couple of wickets early on and what we've been lacking is a bit of belief with the ball and a bit of energy in the field, and that was there for everyone to see tonight. So if we had gone down in a really close one, I would have been telling the guys that I actually thought that that was a season-defining moment."