Chennai, April 4 Praising the Indian players on the Punjab Kings roster as "special" talents, head coach Ricky Ponting says the franchise aimed to rebuild the team around the "highest-quality" domestic players.
PBKS retained only Prabhsimran Singh and Shashank Singh, and entered the auction with a substantial purse of Rs 110.5 crore, and made high-end acquisitions such as Shreyas Iyer, Yuzvendra Chahal, and Arshdeep Singh.
They have been forming the core of the team since IPL 2025.
"Our young Indian talent, the players at the top of the order, are truly special. To build around them, we had a very clear strategy going into the auction (2024) about rebuilding this whole team from the ground up, and becoming a different franchise," Ponting told JioHotStar.
Young opener Priyansh Arya justified Ponting's words with a blistering 39 off 11 balls, before captain Shreyas Iyer made a composed fifty to guide the chase of 210 against Chennai Super Kings at Chepauk on Friday night.
"By just retaining Prabhsimran and Shashank, it gave me the opportunity to pick the players I wanted to work with.
"Shreyas was obviously number one on the list. But it was really important to get the highest-quality Indian players into our team with Arshdeep and Yuzi," he added.
Chahal bowled a crucial spell in the middle overs, taking a wicket for 21 runs in three overs.
Former India spinner Harbhajan Singh was impressed by Chahal's performance against CSK.
"Chahal isn't very tall, so he uses that to his advantage by giving the ball more air and spin. The more spin you give the ball, the more revolutions it will have. And the more revolutions there are, the more the ball will dip and turn because of this, the batter feels like the ball is coming towards them, but it actually isn't; the ball is still far from them."
The veteran leg-spinner also took two wickets against Gujarat Titans a few days back, giving away just 28 runs in his four overs.
"This is classical spin bowling, which is a dying art, almost like dinosaurs; there are only a few left now. There’s Kuldeep, there’s Chahal. The rest say they are spinners, but like everyone else, they don't bowl like one, they just keep bowling fast," he said.