Punjab Kings may have lost the big, keenly-anticipated and high-octane final to RCB but they played valiantly in all the games before.

Even in the finals, they had their moments when they pushed the Bangalore unit closer to the edge, especially in the first innings of the final contest. The bowlers, if not always, did the job.

But things fell out in scoring the runs, rather not scoring them too well, when needed. So when was the point where the contest was lost and how was it lost by PBKS at the end? Basically, where did RCB get back into the game despite having felt the pressure and the final jitters?

Let us attempt to examine some reasons that may possibly have led to Punjab's defeat, the team desirous of a first IPL title losing the crown to another rival that sought it perhaps as desperately.

The in-form captain barely troubling the scorers

It could be argued and maybe the man will get to experience it until late himself, that getting out early was the battle lost at that point for Punjab. They were dusted. However, Shreyas Iyer departing soon was the best thing for RCB. And at the same time, it was the worst thing for the chasing side, who definitely needed their best man out with the bat to stay long and get the job done.

A lazy, faint edge to the keeper behind and it was curtains, wasn't it?

Inconsistent bowling to RCB's middle order!

Particularly during the RCB batting in the middle overs, where the flow of runs was sluggish, Punjab's bowlers weren't really at their best or were they? While surely, none of the RCB batters actually made a half century, there were moments where despite the dot deliveries imposed by PBKS, the bowlers didn't really contain the batters such as Patidar, Agarwal and even Jitesh Sharma. Their fluent and aggressive scoring came at flowing strike rates north of 160, with Sharma, the right hander, making his 24 off just 10 at a S/R of 240.

It was the perfect foil to a more conservative approach that Virat opted for.

Because at all this time where wickets were falling, Kohli was holding onto an end and not playing aggressive strokes, despite actually finishing the innings for his team as its highest run maker.

So it was a bit of a miss on the end of Punjab's bowlers.

Could Stoinis should have been sent higher up the order?

What was mind boggling, at least to a fair extent as one would say, was that particularly during a high run chase such as the one that transpired rather unsuccessfully for Punjab, a giant hitter of the white ball in Stoinis wasn't sent up early.

Was that the blunder PBKS led themselves to and hence, the result?

Now that the game is over, perhaps it's easy to imagine or simply raise the question that what if the two daring and destructive batters from Australia were in charge of the chase with Inglis batting alongside Stoinis?

The right handed batting all rounder was sent after Nehal Wadhera when big runs were needed up to the asking rate of 9 plus an over.

Resultantly, Marcus Stoinis fell as a victim to a planned fielding move made when the third man up into the catching circle behind the keeper on a widish delivery took a regulation catch. And that was that.

Ideally, Marcus Stoinis could have been sent into the attack as a batter the moment the moment the team lost captain Iyer cheaply.

He could have arrested the crumbling run chase, so what was Ponting thinking? Saving a destructor with the bat for too long in the end?

Was Arshdeep Singh really at his best?

Well, truth to be told, Singh, bowled like a King on the whole or so it would seem. That's especially down to the fact that the left arm seamer did, at the end of the day, pick three wickets. That's a lot where it comes to the final contest.

But then, each of Arshdeep's wickets came in at the back of the RCB batting innings. The big hitters of the reputation of Romario Shepherd, Krunal Pandya and the docile tail-ender Bhuvneshwar Kumar, became the late wickets of the young Punjab seamer.

However, while that was nice, what was expected out of Singh was to take early RCB wickets in order to create pressure, something that didn't happen.

While now all of it seems premature for something has actually happened, but just come to think of it that how RCB may have been had they been two wickets down with the score not even fifty early into their innings. Arshdeep is a quality seamer, there's little doubt on that. But yesterday, he was not only expensive but bowled waywardly.

Losing wickets in quick succession in a high stake final game!

If you actually think of it, then you'd realise that the Punjab team in chasing went from being 98 for 4 to 145 for the loss of 7 wickets.

Reading numbers easily dicates the fact that can't be any more clear than it already is- they had a mini collapse down the lower middle order where beside Australian Josh Inglish, not too many were able to muster a fight or stay long enough in the middle to change the fate of an inning that had 'collapse' written over it.

Before Shashank held onto his own, it was all about Josh Inglis attacking the bowlers, but the support he may have so dearly wanted from the other end, didn't really come. The trinity of Iyer, Wadhera and later, Stoinis, only accounted for 22 odd runs. And that's that.

A lot of damage down the PBKS lower middle and lower order was done by the bowling duo of Ramario Shepherd and Bhunveshwar Kumar.