Shreyas Iyer credited Arshdeep Singh’s tactical acumen in helping him take the call of having the Karnataka pacer Vijaykumar Vyshak as the impact player and it paid the dividends for the Punjab Kings in their IPL 2025 opener against the Gujarat Titans.
With the likes of Yuzvendra Chahal and support bowlers like Marcus Stoinis going for runs, the Punjab Kings needed to make their impact player call then and there. At the start of the innings, the Kings might have been in two minds as to whom to go to with as an impact player, whether Harpreet Brar or the pace option in Vijakumar Vyshak. Until the 12th over, the Kings hadn’t named their impact player before he was eventually named at the start of the 13th over as Gujarat Titans were going hammer and tongs.
Arshdeep Singh had just dismissed the set batter Sai Sudharsan in the 12th over and Shreyas Iyer, the PBKS skipper revealed at the end that the left-armer conveyed to him it was reverse-swinging and they had to get someone like Vyshak in and the right-armer did the job. Even though he was coming straight off the bench at a critical juncture, Vyshak stuck to his wide yorker plan and executed it to the T.
However, there’s a video going viral that Arshdeep might have played a role in getting Vyshak on the field. As soon as Arshdeep saw Sherfane Rutherford coming in to bat, the left-arm pacer signalled it towards Iyer to bring in Vyshak at that point with the gestures. Take a look at the now-viral video –
The very next over was bowled by Stoinis and he was taken for 17 runs. At 169/2 in 14 overs, the Titans were actually ahead and hence, Punjab Kings had to backload Vyshak with two overs of Marco Jansen and Arshdeep to finish and the visitors ended up winning the game.
“Really happy for him, he’s putting in the hard yards at practice, and was executing yorkers really well, and the results showed in the game as well,” Arshdeep said of Vyshak after the match.
“The plan was if you are going to miss, miss on the wider side and not on the stumps. It does slip a bit with dew around but the plan was just bowl as wide as possible, even if it slips, it’s a full-toss, it won’t be easy for them to hit, because it’s very far from their reach.”
Rutherford just couldn’t get under those wide yorkers from Vyshak and the Kings won the game by 11 runs, with Arshdeep getting the big-hitting West Indian out.
