“Confidence was there because…”: PBKS’ Ashutosh Sharma on his fiery knock against GT

Ahmedabad (Gujarat) [India]: Following his fiery knock against Gujarat Titans (GT) in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024, Punjab Kings (PBKS) batter Ashutosh Sharma said that he had confidence while batting since the coaches and staff believed in him.

The 25-year-old batter scored 31 runs from 17 balls at a strike rate of 182.35 and helped his side clinch a 3-wicket win over Gujarat. Ashutosh slammed 3 fours and a six during his time on the crease.

While speaking at the post-match press conference, Ashutosh said that the management of the Punjab-based franchise backed him. He added that the confidence helped him play a blitzkrieg knock.

The right-handed batter further added that was happy to repay his coaches’ faith in him.
“Confidence was there because the coaches and Punjab Kings management believed in me a lot. They were backing me a lot. They told me ‘You’re such a player who is capable of finishing games for us’. That confidence, I carried. I went out to the middle and applied it. I feel happy to have repaid the faith shown by the coaches,” Ashutosh said.

He also showered praise on Shashank Singh and said that the batting allrounder played a “good” inning at the end of the match.
Ashutosh revealed that both he and Shashank did not panic at the end of the run chase and were very calm.

“It was a very good innings from Shashank Singh. I had confidence in him that he would be able to pull it off. We both are pinch-hitters. We had belief that we would win the match. We both were very calm, we didn’t panic at all,” he added.

Both Ashutosh and Shashank played a 43-run partnership in the end while chasing the 200-run partnership given by GT, to help the visitors win the game by 3 wickets.
Summarizing the match, Gill struck the highest individual score of the IPL 2024 – 89* and Rahul Tewatia came at the end to play a short cameo of 23* in a mere 8 delivers to power GT to 199/4 in the first inning.

In reply, Shashank Singh’s (61*) blitz and Ashutosh’s (31) rattled GT as they chased down the target and clinched a three-wicket victory for the Punjab Kings.

Following the win, the Punjab-based franchise stands in fifth place in the IPL 2024 standings with four points. On the other hand, Gujarat holds the sixth place with four points.