PBKS coach Ponting reacts to Kohli's emotional celebration following RCB's maiden IPL title: 'It's not easy...'

Virat Kohli’s emotional celebration after Royal Challengers Bengaluru finally ended their 17-year wait for a maiden title shows just how tough it is to win the Indian Premier League (IPL), Punjab Kings head coach Ricky Ponting had said after the final in Ahmedabad on Tuesday.

Kohli's eyes began to tear up in the final over of PBKS’ chase of the 191-run target set by RCB at the Narendra Modi Stadium, and the batting star dropped to his knees once Australian pacer Josh Hazlewood bowled out the final delivery to seal a six-run victory for his team.

The 36-year-old, after all, has played every IPL season since the league’s inception in 2008 and has remained loyal to RCB throughout , and it wasn’t until Tuesday that he finally got to lay his hands on the glittering trophy.

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“You can see in his eyes in that last over, he was shedding a tear, that’s what it means to players, that’s what it means to everyone,” Ponting had told reporters after the final, in which Kohli had scored 43 to finish the season as the third-highest run-scorer with 657 runs.

“Chennai (Super Kings) have won it a few times, Mumbai (Indians) have won it a few times, but it’s not an easy tournament to win — it is as simple as that — and you have to think long and hard about that. It’s not easy to win this thing,” Punter added.

Like RCB, PBKS too had never lifted the trophy despite being part of the IPL since its inception, and had only reached the final just once – in 2014.

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The arrival of coach Ponting and captain Shreyas Iyer, who had led Kolkata Knight Riders to their third title last year, however, transformed PBKS’ fortunes completely with IPL’s ‘perennial underachievers’ reaching the playoffs for the first time in 11 years after finishing top of the table.

Iyer and Ponting had previously formed a successful captain-coach pairing at Delhi Capitals, having helped the franchise reach the playoffs after a gap of seven years in 2019 and make their only appearance in an IPL final the following year.