Punjab Kings’ (PBKS) Shreyas Iyer became the first captain in IPL history to score a century while batting at number four or below on Saturday (May 23), after smashing 101 off only 51 balls against the Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) at the Ekana Stadium to secure a crucial seven-wicket win for his team.
There are 16 other instances of captains hitting centuries in the IPL before Shreyas, but all of them were from the top three. Moreover, Shreyas is the fourth captain — after Sanju Samson, Virat Kohli, and Virender Sehwag — to hit a century in a run-chase in the IPL, but he’s the first to do it for PBKS. Previously, only two PBKS captains had scored IPL centuries, KL Rahul and Adam Gilchrist, but both did it in the first innings.
Such knocks in run-chases
have been a feature of Shreyas’ PBKS career. Since he joined, PBKS have chased down seven 190-plus scores, and the Mumbaikar has quite remarkably hit a half-century in each of those. This was perhaps the most important — he came to the crease with the score at 22/2 and smashed 11 fours and five sixes to break the back of the chase, before ensuring PBKS got a quick finish in the 18th over.
PBKS are now reliant on the Mumbai Indians beating the Rajasthan Royals to qualify for the playoffs.
Shreyas Iyer to support MI Vs RR
Shreyas Iyer was proud of himself for the knock but realised that now all his energies would need to go in support of MI.
“I’m ecstatic to be honest,” Shreyas said after the match. “It’s my first hundred and came at the right time when the team needed it. We won eventually after six consecutive losses. It’s a great positive and just hoping to support MI tomorrow… It’s a surreal feeling when you finish off the game and score a century. All the batsmen dream of that. Today was one of the days when I felt super. I was in a great mindspace. I knew what I wanted, knew how the wicket was playing. Kinda reading the situation and how the wicket was playing helped me to score my runs and the partnership was crucial. That creates the momentum in the game and just to win it from there, I’m elated,” he added.
