INDIAN PREMIER LEAGUE | VIRAT KOHLI BECOMES FIRST TO PLAY ALL 19 IPL SEASONS
Chennai, April 4: Lauding the Indian players in Punjab Kings’ roster as “special” talents, head coach Ricky Ponting says the franchise had the aim of rebuilding the team around the “highest-quality” domestic players.
The PBKS had retained just Prabhsimran Singh and Shashank Singh, and went into the auction with a heavy purse of Rs 110.5 crore, and made some high-end buys such as Shreyas Iyer, Yuzvendra Chahal and Arshdeep Singh.
They have been forming the team’s core since IPL 2025.“Our young Indian talent, the guys at the top of the order, are pretty special. To build some of those Aussie guys around them, we had a really clear strategy going into the auction (2024) about trying to rebuild this whole team from the bottom up, and change and be different as a franchise,” Ponting told JioHotStar.Young opener Priyansh Arya vindicated Ponting’s words with a blistering 11-ball 39 against Chennai Super Kings.
“By just keeping Prabhsimran and Shashank, it gave us an opportunity for me to pick the guys that I wanted to work with.“Shreyas was obviously number one on the list. But it was really important to get the highest-quality Indian players into our team with Arshdeep and Yuzi,” he added. (PTI)
