How Bairstow - and Punjab Kings - got out of a rut with a batting show for the ages

At this point in IPL 2024, a team scoring 261 is hardly a surprise. The chasing team mowing a total like that down with an over and some to spare? Even that prospect had started to look like an eventuality waiting to happen, with the way teams like Sunrisers Hyderabad, Kolkata Knight Riders and even Rajasthan Royals have gone about their business this year.

But for Punjab Kings to be the team to pull off the highest-ever T20 run chase, when they came into the game with the second-slowest batting unit of the season, on the back of four consecutive defeats? Even in a season where run-scoring has reached bizarre heights, few would have had that in their IPL bingo.

But it was just that kind of a day where all odds were defied. For PBKS, it was almost like Murphy's Law, but in reverse. They came to Eden Gardens with their top five averaging 19.07 - only Rajasthan Royals in 2009 had a top five that averaged worse over the course of a season.

The IPL seemed to only prolong one of their most bankable overseas stars Jonny Bairstow's miserable run of form in India, which includes the ODI World Cup last year and England's Test tour earlier this year. Even with their regular captain Shikhar Dhawan injured, PBKS had opted to drop Bairstow for the previous two games after he couldn't cross a best score of 42 after six innings. In all, they tried four different opening partnerships and six players in the top three, including opening with stand-in captain Sam Curran.

But against KKR, they brought Bairstow back, and the drop seemed to have lit a fire in him. After all, there are few sights scarier on a cricket field than an angry Bairstow. Just ask Virat Kohli.

PBKS would have started the season with high hopes from Prabhsimran Singh, but he had failed to convert his starts. But on Friday, after smacking Harshit Rana for two sixes on either side of the wicket in the second over of the chase, he got going. He plundered 23 runs off Chameera's next over before cutting KKR's Impact Player Anukul Roy for a boundary and then attacking him with a reverse-sweep the next ball, albeit picking up just the two runs off that shot.

Sunil Narine - whom Bairstow said PBKS did not want to lose wickets to - came on to bowl the fifth over and was greeted with a four and a six behind square leg by Prabhsimran as he raced to an 18-ball half-century.

By the end of the fifth over, Prabhsimran was on 54 off 20 balls, Bairstow on 12 off 10 and PBKS on 69. They had already bettered their previous best powerplay performance of the season.

"[KKR] got a flier themselves thanks to Satly [Phil Salt] and Sunil so we knew we had to go ballistic in the powerplay," Bairstow said in the post-match presentation. "You've got to take risks to go on. When you've to chase 200-plus you've to take risks in the powerplay."

Bairstow strikes at 119.53 against left-arm spinners in the IPL, but there was no respect paid to the match-up when Anukul was given a second over in the powerplay. Bairstow smoked three fours and two sixes off the first five balls to give PBKS their highest-ever powerplay score.

It would have been the perfect first six overs for PBKS but for Prabhsimran being caught short of the crease for an unnecessary run-out off the final ball of the over. But it mattered little to the batting team, because that over was what Bairstow needed to find his lost rhythm.

This was evident in the tenth over when a short ball from Andre Russell stayed lower than Bairstow was expecting as he shaped to hook, but he was quick to adjust and roll his wrists over it to turn it into a short-arm pull into the gap behind square leg for four. He had his sights set, and on a pitch where the ball was coming on nicely, he was going to make it count.

But so steep was the challenge for them that even as PBKS knocked 39 runs off the target in the first four overs after the powerplay, ESPNcricinfo's forecaster still gave them only an 11.08% chance of winning. Bairstow went 6, 4, 6 in Varun Chakravarthy's next over to take their win probability up to 25%. Then, over the space of four legal deliveries, PBKS were suddenly 70% favourites to win.

Russell started with a wide before being pulled for six by Rilee Rossouw. Another wide and a single followed before Bairstow deposited two back-of-length deliveries behind square leg for consecutive sixes - the second one travelling 105 metres.

And when he clobbered Narine through backward point for four more off the first ball of the next over, he was suddenly on 92 off 36.

Rossouw fell in that over, but it did not slow PBKS down. Shashank Singh, a revelation in the lower-middle order for PBKS this season, was promoted above Jitesh Sharma and Curran, and didn't take much time to settle in.

Where KKR's innings was largely a case of Phil Salt and Narine going hard in equal measure throughout a stunning 138-run opening partnership, PBKS' chase felt like a relay race, with Prabhsimran starting things off before passing the baton of acceleration to Bairstow, who now handed it to Shashank, whose unbeaten 28-ball 68 was laced with eight sixes and two fours.

Bairstow got to his century in 45 balls in the 16th over and was equally belligerent against pace and spin. He took on the fast bowlers at a strike rate of 200 and went much quicker against spinners, striking at 246.15.

In the end, PBKS almost cantered to victory, with eight wickets and eight balls to spare. Before Friday, PBKS were the only team to not concede 200 runs or more this season. The first time they did, they conceded so many they would have been among the least fancied teams to make a game out of it. But the response served up an instant classic.

Now, they will have to ensure that this batting performance becomes more their template, and less an outlier.