‘Not an easy tournament to win’: Ponting reflects on Punjab Kings’ narrow IPL final loss

After coming too close to win their maiden Indian Premier League (IPL) title, the Punjab Kings once again failed to overcome the last hurdle, losing by six runs in the 2025 final. It was their first IPL final appearance since 2014, when they were defeated by Kolkata Knight Riders. This year, expectations were high, especially with a revamped squad assembled at a cost of over Rs 100 crore and new coach Ricky Ponting at the helm.

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Reflecting on the loss, Ponting praised his team’s effort while acknowledging the competitiveness of the league.

“This is not an easy tournament to win,” Ponting said.

“The way we’ve played our cricket, it’s been a highly entertaining team to watch, and that gives me satisfaction. Probably, a little bit of inexperience in the middle order cost us, but these younger guys (Prabhsimran Singh, Priyansh Arya, Nehal Wadhera) will be with us for a long time. I think they’re going to win us a lot of games going forward,” he added.

Shashank Singh’s unbeaten 61 off 30 balls in the final nearly pulled off a miracle for the Kings. However, it was not enough. Ponting disagreed with the remarks that the batting track was a slow one and said that his side lost momentum in a crucial spot. Despite the top order Arya and Prabhsimran proving the Kings a good start up the top order in the chase, the middle-order could not capitalise on the momentum and Punjab fell short of the target by a small margin.

“There are no excuses. He (Shashank) was our best batter tonight. We just lost a bit of momentum at a critical time in probably the last couple of overs of the power play and we lost critical wickets,” he said.

Looking into the future, the coach said that the team will continue to grow and come back stronger next season.

“It was only a couple of days ago we were celebrating one of our greatest wins of the season to reach the final. Now, we feel like we let one slip. But with such a young group, we will come back stronger next season,” he said.

He concluded by saying, “I made it clear when I was appointed as head coach...I wanted to make sure things were done in a certain way from the top. I wanted to make things different, I wanted to make significant change, and I think we have managed to do that.”