Former Indian player Manoj Tiwary has very strong opinions regarding Punjab Kings‘ chances in the IPL 2025. He thinks the team has a hard road ahead for winning the title this time because of their head coach Ricky Ponting who prefers foreign players more than local talent.
In the latest match against the Kolkata Knight Riders, Punjab was able to score 201 runs, with just four wickets in hand at the time rain interrupted play. The innings included some great performances from Prabhsimran Singh, who scored 83 runs off 49 balls, and Priyansh Arya, who added 69 runs off just 35 balls.
But, after the two came out, the decision that the management had come up with to send in international players like Glenn Maxwell, Marco Jansen, and Josh Inglis over in-form Indian batsmen Nehal Wadhera and Shashank Singh raised some brows. Tiwary was pretty disappointed and slammed Ponting’s decision on social media. According to him, this undermining of his confidence in local players could be a major reason for the downfall of the team this season.
“I feel Punjab won’t win the IPL trophy this year.” When I saw how they batted today, by not picking Indian in-form players like Nehal Wadhera and Shashank Singh, the coach preferred the foreign players who were absolutely useless. This shows a real lack of faith in the Indian batsmen further down the order. If he keeps it up, then the title will probably not reach them, even if they succeed in making it to the top two.”
My gut feeling says that punjab team will not be able to win the #IPL trophy this season because what I saw today when they were batting was, the coach didn’t send Indian inform batters Nehal wadera and Shasank singh, instead he trusted his foreign players to deliver, but they…
— MANOJ TIWARY (@tiwarymanoj) April 26, 2025
Shashank Singh has had a pretty good season so far with 158 runs in seven innings at an average of 52.66, also scoring a half-century. Nehal Wadhera is not far behind either as he has a total of 189 runs from seven innings and has even played crucial innings to help his team win against the likes of Lucknow Super Giants and Royal Challengers Bengaluru. Unfortunately, these two players did not have the opportunity to play against KKR.
The match fizzled out due to continuous rainfall in Eden Gardens Kolkata making Punjab holding the fourth position on the points table with five wins from a total of encounters that numbered to nine matches, giving them overall 11 points. The next match for them is against most probably the Chennai Super Kings at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai on April 30. It can be well understood that their chances entirely depend on the coming matches regarding adaptation and show case ability.
