“He has no fear of the game” - Punjab Kings assistant coach Brad Haddin hails Jitesh Sharma

Punjab Kings (PBKS) assistant coach Brad Haddin hailed keeper-batter Jitesh Sharma after the latter smashed an unbeaten 49 off 27 balls in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 match against Mumbai Indians (MI) on Wednesday, May 3.

Jitesh and Liam Livingstone (82* off 42) added an unbroken 119 for the fourth wicket in Mohali as Punjab put up 214/3 after being asked to bat. While PBKS went down in the contest as MI successfully chased the target with six wickets in hand, Haddin praised Jitesh over his impressive knock

Speaking at the post-match press conference, he said:

“He’s [Jitesh] developing nicely. He has gained a lot of confidence as the tournament has gone on and that reflected in the way we used him tonight [Wednesday]. He played really well in the previous games but only faced 10 balls and tonight we wanted him to go up the order and give him the opportunity to face more balls.

“We have seen, once he goes out there, he has no fear of the game. He’s building really well. He’s starting to mature into his game. He’s one of those players who has got the unique ability to go from ball one. I think the more balls he faces is good for his development. A think we’ll see a lot more of these sort of innings.”

Jitesh has been in fantastic form in IPL 2023, smashing 239 runs in 10 matches at a strike rate of 165.97.

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“His innings was pretty special” - Brad Haddin on Suryakumar Yadav’s knock

Punjab would have been confident of defending a total of 214. However, Mumbai made a mockery of the target courtesy of a fantastic 116-run stand for the third wicket between Suryakumar Yadav (66 off 31) and Ishan Kishan (75 off 41).

Praising Suryakumar, Haddin said:

“He hits in different areas. Both batters, because of the left and right combination, complemented each other. The way he [Suryakumar] controlled the middle part of the game was outstanding. He took the game away

“We probably didn’t execute what we needed to and allowed him to hit too many boundaries and get on a roll. His innings was pretty special.”

Following Suryakumar and Kishan’s dismissals, Tilak Varma (26* off 10) and Tim David (19* off 10) added 38 runs for the fifth wicket to take Mumbai home in 18.5 overs.