The Punjab Kings painted their beloved stadium at Dharamsala a vivid shade of red as they thrashed the Lucknow Super Giants by 37 runs in their important Tata IPL clash on Sunday night.

The Kings kept their interest in the playoffs alive with their win – they moved up to second on the table, a point behind leaders Chennai Super Kings – while Lucknow’s chances have dimmed significantly.

The Kings simply outplayed their opponents in every aspect of the game. After being put in to bat, they scored their biggest total – 236 for five – at the ground thanks largely to 91 in 48 balls from Prabhsimran Singh, before their left-arm paceman, Arshdeep Singh, bowled three magnificent overs in the power play, taking 3-10 in three overs to effectively dissolve any prospect of a successful Lucknow run chase.

Arshdeep finished with 3-16, a remarkable effort on an excellent pitch for batting, getting the ball to move appreciably and maintaining excellent control.

Singh accounted for Mitch Marsh for a duck, well held in the deep by Nehal Wadhera, Aiden Markram, who played on, and Nicholas Pooran plumb leg before in his brilliant opening spell.

After that, it was always going to be extremely tough for the visitors and their prospects were reduced to virtually zero when Rishabh Pant and David Miller were both caught on the deep point boundary before they really got going. That left the Super Giants floundering on 73 for five in the 10th over, and the prospect of an embarrassingly lopsided defeat loomed large.

But the visitors eventually showed some fortitude with an excellent sixth-wicket stand of 81 off 41 balls between Ayush Badoni and Abdul Samad (45 off 24 balls), with the former playing some remarkable strokes before Marcus Jansen took a fine caught and bowled to end Samad’s defiance.

Badoni went on to strike a sizzling 74 off 40 balls, his highest IPL score that included five fours and five sixes, but the early wreckage of the innings, and the intimidating requirement of needing 12 runs an over at the start, proved way too much as Lucknow finally totalled 199 for seven.

FURIOUS BATTING MOMENTUM

Earlier, Punjab shrugged off the early wicket of Priyansh Anya as Singh and Josh Inglis tore into the Lucknow attack. Inglis smashed a four and four sixes to set the tone of the innings before Miller grasped a fine catch in the outfield to send him back for 30 in just 14 balls.

But then the main event occurred when Singh was joined by his skipper, Shreyas Iyer (45 off 25 balls), who cracked 78 off 47 balls for the third wicket before Iyer departed. A feature of the innings was that all the Punjab batters got stuck in immediately, so that the furious momentum of the innings was maintained throughout.

It looked as if Prabhsimran would go on to reach three figures, but he was eventually held by Nicholas Pooran in the covers when he had reached 91, including six fours and seven sixes. The catch was a relief to Pooran as he had earlier dropped a very acceptable chance off Singh when he was on 21.

The innings ended on a bright note as Shashank Singh (33 off 15 balls) and Marcus Stoinis (15 off five) continued to torment the Lucknow attack. Aside from some ragged bowling, there was also some shoddy outfielding and poor catching from the visitors.