Shashank Singh reveals MS Dhoni’s advice after match-winning knock against GT

Despite playing for multiple franchises in the IPL, Shashank Singh could never establish himself in the cash-rich league. After Punjab Kings bought him for the 17th edition, there was a lot of confusion as it was reported that the franchise wanted to sign a different player of the same name. However, in the end, they backed Shashank, who has played some brilliant cricket in IPL 2024 and played a match-winning 61* runs off 29 deliveries against Gujarat Titans.

After the match, the 32-year-old revealed legendary cricketer MS Dhoni’s advice to him as he mentioned that the former CSK skipper asked him to take the game deep and put pressure on the bowlers. Shashank added that he tried to stay calm and react to the ball and didn’t try to play any rash shots against Gujarat.

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“Whenever I have talked with Mahi Bhai (MS Dhoni), he always told me to take the game as deep as possible. He said when you take the game deep, the pressure on the bowler is as much as on the batter. It's about who keeps the nerve calm. It is all about the mental thing to be as calm as possible.. I was doing deep breathing to keep myself calm and react to the ball. Sometimes you be over-smart and play rash shots, but I was just looking to react to the ball” Shashank was quoted as saying by My Khel.

Notably, chasing 200 runs seemed difficult for PBKS at one stage. They were reduced to 70/4 at one stage but after that Shashank and Ashutosh Sharma (31 runs off 17 deliveries) took care of the business as they batted brilliantly to help PBKS win their second match of the season. Speaking about his partnership with Ashutosh, Shashank said that they were complementing each other well and believed in each other’s abilities.

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“I was talking with Ashutosh Sharma and he was talking with me in the middle. I was telling him if we were till the end, we would win the match. We were complementing each other very well and we had the belief in each other. We also have practised with the same scenarios of scoring 50-60 runs in four or five overs, which came into play as well. We have done it before in the practice games, and we believed each other,” Shashank added.