Having suffered their sixth loss from eight outings in IPL 2024 so far, Punjab Kings are tottering at the penultimate 9th spot in the IPL leaderboard after going down to Gujarat Titans by three wickets at Mullanpur on Sunday.

The loss leaves the Kings in a precarious position, almost negating their play-off chances, but bowling coach Charl Langeveldt is hopeful of taking something out of the season. However, Langeveldt has called upon his batters to arrest the trend of batting collapses that the side has endured in the ongoing season.

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The PBKS side has been prone to batting collapses this season, and on Sunday, it was another familiar collapse after stand-in skipper Sam Curran opted to bat first and the side lost 7 for 47 runs after a half-century opening stand. Even Shashank Singh and Ashutosh Sharma — their unsung heroes so far in the season, failed to rescue the Kings’ innings this time, and eventually were shot out for 142.

“Disappointing. Players are hurt as well as the staff and the fans. We showed a lot of character with the ball. We had a good powerplay with the bat for the first time in three games but in the middle period, their spinners were too quality for our batters and we struggled. We just need middle order upfront to get more runs. We were probably 20 runs short on that wicket,” Langeveldt said.

Gujarat Titans’ left-arm-spinner R Sai Kishore turned out the wrecker-in-chief with four scalps, leaving the Kings’ searching for cover, and had to sacrifice leg-spinner Rahul Chahar to include a batter in Harpreet Singh Bhatia as an Impact Player sub in the midst of a collapse.

“It was the idea, we could have another spinner (Rahul) Chahar to play in but obviously when you’re batting and you’ve had a collapse like that, it’s better to get the runs on board,” Langeveldt reasoned.

“That’s something we want to improve, get more runs on the board. We are gonna travel now and we are gonna play on better batting wickets and that would give the batters a bit more confidence going into the last few games. We take every game like a semi-final, final but yeah, it’s one of those things.”

“The batters are definitely going to be happy about the next venue (Eden Gardens). The bowlers need to step up as well when we play at different venues, higher scoring grounds. Hopefully our batters will come good for us,” he hoped.

With six more games to be played, Punjab Kings face a challenging task of winning all six for them to have any remote chances of qualifying, but Langeveldt is still looking forward to taking the positives from this season.

“We still have to have that belief. We are a positive side, the boys showed a lot of character in the field. There’s a lot to play for, we just need to win,” he said.