Punjab Kings

The 44-year-old had stepped down as the PBKS batting coach ahead of the IPL 2022 mega-auction earlier this year. He had joined the Punjab Kings (then Kings XI Punjab) back in 2019 and had previously worked with the side for three seasons. Meanwhile, the franchise also appointed former South African cricketer Charl Langeveldt as their new fast bowling coach.

The decision to appoint Dhawan as the captain was approved on Wednesday during a franchise board meeting and was backed by Trevor Bayliss, Kings' newly appointed head coach, an ESPN cricinfo report. Agarwal, who was appointed captain just before IPL 2022, was one of two players --Arshdeep Singh being the other -- who had been retained by Kings ahead of the mega auction.

"News reports published by a certain sports news website pertaining to captaincy of the Punjab Kings franchise have been making the rounds in the last few days. We would like to state that no official of the team has issued any statement on the same," said the franchise in their official statement. Ahead of the start of IPL 2022 season, Agarwal was appointed as the captain of Punjab Kings as KL Rahul took the same role with debutants Lucknow Super Giants.

"We couldn't stitch two back-to-back wins. We lost wickets in a cluster, and that at times derailed us. We have played an aggressive brand of cricket overall. We are going to sit and discuss now after the IPL. We were here to get two points and we were here to enjoy ourselves. We meant business and looked to execute things to the best of our ability," said Agarwal after the match.

Coming into this game, Brar had picked just one wicket in four matches but here against Hyderabad, he turned the match for Punjab. But Brar didn't have the best of starts in IPL 2022's final league match. Abhishek Sharma, his team-mate in domestic cricket for Punjab, pulled his second ball on the backfoot over deep midwicket for a six in his first over which brought nine runs for no wicket.

Both Hyderabad and Punjab are already out of the race for the playoffs and would look to finish off their IPL 2022 campaign on a high. Bhuvneshwar further said that all-rounder Romario Shepherd and left-arm spinner Jagadeesha Suchith replace Kane Williamson and T Natarajan in the playing eleven.

While Hyderabad endured a five-match losing streak after winning as many matches by overcoming first two losses in the tournament, Punjab Kings oscillated between the highs and lows, summed up by the fact that they could never string back-to-back wins. From Punjab's ultra-aggressive batting line-up which was tipped to do well in IPL 2022, only Shikhar Dhawan, Liam Livingstone and Jitesh Sharma have been the bright spots.

Marsh, who missed several games after testing positive for Covid-19 and spending a few days in hospital as well, scored a patient 48-ball 63 and his partnerships with Sarfaraz Khan and Lalit Yadav took Delhi Capitals to a fighting 159/7 on a spinning track. It helped the Rishabh Pant-led side climb to fourth place in the points table and brighten their chances of a playoff berth with one league match still to go for them.

In the earlier clash between these two teams at Brabourne Stadium, Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav and Lalit Yadav combined to leave Punjab in a spin, picking 6/45 overall in 10 overs at a run rate of 4.50 to be out for a paltry score of 115, which unsurprisingly was chased down by Delhi in 10.3 overs.

David Warner took a strike at the last moment on seeing Livingstone take the ball. But the move backfired spectacularly as Warner slashed hard at a length ball outside the off-stump, which bounced and held a little, taking a thick edge to backward point.