Seven games unbeaten. A record 265 chase. And then six losses in a row. The most confusing collapse in IPL 2026.
On the evening of April 25, Punjab Kings did something that had never been done in the history of T20 cricket. They chased 265 runs. Not scraped home, not survived. They chased it with six wickets in hand and seven balls to spare, setting a new world record for the highest successful run chase in IPL history. That night, Punjab Kings were the best batting side in the competition. They were six wins from seven games with one washout. They were top of the table. They looked unstoppable.
That was three and a half weeks ago. Since then, they have lost six games in a row. The same team. The same players. The same captain. Six losses in a row.
This is the story of how that happened.
The Peak
To understand the collapse you have to understand what Punjab actually looked like when things were going well. And things were going very, very well. Priyansh Arya and Prabhsimran Singh opened the batting against Delhi Capitals on April 26 and put on 126 runs in 6.5 overs. Their powerplay score was 105 without loss, the highest powerplay total in IPL history. Prabhsimran made 76 off 26 balls. Arya scored 43 off 17. They were not just batting well. They were batting in a way that made every total feel reachable.
The pair had been doing this all season. Arya, Prabhsimran and Cooper Connolly had been performing consistently throughout the tournament at the top of the order, while Shreyas Iyer was chipping in with important knocks as captain. Punjab had the most explosive opening partnership in the competition and for seven games, that was enough to cover everything else.
The bowling was not the strongest. Yuzvendra Chahal had started the season well but was showing signs of losing his edge. Marco Jansen and Xavier Bartlett were expensive at times. But when your opening pair is putting on 100-plus stands in the first six overs, bowling problems feel like something you can deal with later.
Later came faster than anyone expected.
The First Crack
The first loss came against Rajasthan Royals. Punjab had made 222 with Marcus Stoinis blasting an unbeaten 62 off 22 balls to finish the innings. It should have been a defendable total. Rajasthan chased it down with four balls to spare. Donovan Ferreira and Shubham Dubey added 77 off 32 balls in the fifth wicket stand to end it.
The bowling had been exposed. Yuzvendra Chahal, who had taken wickets regularly in the early games, had just one wicket in his last four outings going into that match and his economy rate had climbed. When the spinners were done, Punjab had only pace to call on and the chase ran away from them.
But one loss is not a crisis. One loss is cricket. What happened next was something different.
The Middle Order Problem Nobody Talked About
Punjab’s batting had always been built on their top three. That worked beautifully when the top three fired. When they did not, there was very little behind them.
Nehal Wadhera and Shashank Singh had played a few useful cameos across the season but neither had managed to change games consistently. The middle and lower order had not contributed regularly enough to cover for a top-order failure.
In the 265 chase against Delhi, the top order made it irrelevant. But as the season went on and opposition teams started preparing specifically for Arya and Prabhsimran, the lack of a reliable middle order became a genuine problem. Teams figured out that if you could get the openers early, the innings fell away quickly.
Against Mumbai Indians, it happened in the clearest possible way. From 107 for 1, PBKS collapsed to 140 for 7. Shardul Thakur took 4 for 39 and Deepak Chahar took 2 for 36. They recovered to 200 thanks to some late hitting, but the damage was done in the middle overs and MI chased it comfortably.
The Bowling Fell Apart
Piyush Chawla, speaking on JioHotstar, pointed out that Punjab’s biggest concern through the losing streak was their overseas pace bowling. Marco Jansen returned figures of 1 for 55 in four overs in the MI game. Xavier Bartlett went wicketless for 0 for 53 in 3.5 overs in the same match.
The pace unit had looked strong in the beginning but their performance had not been encouraging as the season went on. Punjab had become heavily dependent on Arshdeep Singh and Chahal to take wickets while the overseas quicks went for runs.
In modern IPL cricket, expensive bowling does not just cost you runs. It puts your batters in positions where they need to score at rates even they cannot sustain. Every 50-run spell in the back half of a bowling innings means your batters need to find 12, 13, 14 an over. Even the best batting lineups in the world cannot do that every night.
The Last Game: Same Ground, Different Team
The clearest picture of what Punjab had become came in the last game of their season against RCB in Dharamsala.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar dismissed Priyansh Arya with a hard length ball in the first over. Then he had Prabhsimran Singh toe-edging to first slip. Then Rasikh Salam got the outside edge of Shreyas Iyer, who fell for just 1. Punjab’s top three were gone before the powerplay ended.
It was the ninth time this season that Punjab had conceded a 200-plus total to the opposition. And this time, without their openers, they never had a chance. RCB won by 23 runs. The match sealed their own qualification and deepened Punjab’s crisis at the same time.
Where It Leaves Them
Punjab now need to win their last game against LSG and then hope that both CSK and RR drop points in their remaining games. LSG are already eliminated and have nothing to play for. But as CSK found out earlier this month, eliminated teams do not always roll over.
The squad that chased 265 on April 26 has not changed. The captain is the same. The openers are the same. The bowling attack is the same. Nothing has been added or removed. And yet the team that was setting records a month ago is now waiting on results from other games to determine whether their season continues.
Six losses in a row have a way of making things that once felt easy feel very difficult. For Punjab Kings in IPL 2026, nothing feels easy right now.
