Young guns Dewald Brevis and Tilak Varma shared an 84-run stand but it was not enough to take MI past the line against PBKS in Tata IPL 2022.

Rohit Sharma won the toss and chose to bowl but Punjab Kings got off to a good start, with their openers Mayank Agarwal and Shikhar Dhawan racing to 65 in the powerplay, including taking 17 runs off a M Ashwin over.

They shared a 97-run opening stand before Ash broke it after having Agarwal caught at long-off. The wicket helped us seize back the momentum as Jaydev Unadkat soon removed Jonny Bairstow and Boom got Liam Livingstone with a perfect yorker.

PBKS went from 99/1 in 10 overs to 132/3 in 15 as our bowlers put brakes on the scoring. After a 17-run opening over, Ash gave just 17 more in his three overs, finishing with 1/34.

We were not able to finish strong though as cameos from Jitesh Sharma and Shahrukh Khan took PBKS to 198/5.

In response, Ro began in aggressive fashion, scoring 10 off the first over and swiftly moved to 28 off 16 balls, even bringing up 10,000 T20 runs with an elegant six over cover off Kagiso Rabada.

However, he fell off the very next ball, top-edging an attempted pull. Ishan also fell in the next over.

That brought Brevis and Tilak Varma together at the crease and the duo went into hitting mode immediately.

They hit four fours and a six in the next three overs to generate momentum before Brevis cut loose against Rahul Chahar.

After Tilak took a single off the first ball, Brevis hit a four off the second and then launched four sixes off Chahar, sending it into the stands at long-on and mid-wicket off both full and short balls.

The duo hit a four and a six each in the next two overs before Brevis pulled a short one to deep backward square to be dismissed for 49.

SKY was in next and he took a while to get going. Tilak, who looked in great touch, had a miscommunication with SKY in the middle and was run-out.

Polly also had a mix-up with SKY and was dismissed in the same fashion as Tilak.

SKY then launched a couple of big hits but was caught at long-on trying one too many off Rabada.

Despite a six from Jaydev Unadkat in the final over, it proved to be a bridge too far for us as we fell short by 12 runs.

Rohit seemed satisfied after the game but admitted that a couple of moments derailed our chase.

“There's hardly anything to find out from that game. I thought we played the game pretty well, came pretty close towards the back end of our batting innings. It's just that a couple of crucial run-outs were not needed, but that happens. At one stage we were cruising through and keeping up with the run rate as well, but in the end we couldn't hold our nerves. Credit to Kings with the way they bowled at the back end,” he said at the post-match presentation.

It was now back to the drawing board for the team again.

“We've not been playing good cricket for a while and that's why we've been on the losing side, simple as that. The Kings batted pretty well up front and put pressure on our bowlers, got a 90-100 run partnership to begin with. But I thought 190+ was chaseable on that pitch because that pitch was really good to bat on as you saw when we were batting as well. We just have to go back and see what we do as a team,” he concluded.

We will now play against the Lucknow Super Giants next on April 16th at the Brabourne Stadium.