Punjab Kings will be desperate for a turnaround against Mumbai Indian when the two teams meet at the HPCA Stadium here on Thursday.

After leading the standings for nearly four weeks, PBKS slumped to fourth place on the back of four straight defeats. Another slip-up will leave it in a scrap for the final Playoffs spot.

Fifties from Shreyas Iyer and Priyansh Arya against Delhi Capitals were reminiscent of the batting flourish that was the backbone of Punjab Kings’ early success. But its bowling lapses continue to cost it.

PBKS leaked 73 runs off four overs at the death against the Capitals, and has the worst economy rate in this phase this season (11.66).

The silver lining, though, has been Arshdeep Singh delivering again up front. He has three wickets at an economy of 8.15 in the last three games after a horrid run which got him just four wickets in eight games before that.

“Arshdeep is a terrific cricketer. And these big cricketers rise at the right moment. I think now is the right time and our coach Ricky Ponting always speaks of peaking at the right time, at the back end of the tournament,” Punjab Kings’ assistant bowling coach Trevor Gonsalves said.

Odds would favour Punjab to get its act together against a Mumbai Indians side that is already out of the reckoning for the Playoffs.

Its listless run was already a mood dampener this season, and MI has been handed another cruel blow with stand-in captain Suryakumar Yadav unavailable for the game.

The best chance MI has of getting out of its rut is to take on the misfiring Punjab bowlers. Ryan Rickelton and Rohit Sharma have nailed their role in setting the pace this year, adding 380 runs in six innings at a run rate of 11.76.

Punjab Kings, a team that looked like an unstoppable force about three weeks ago, is now struggling to get a ‘W’ next to its name.

In a matter of a few matches, PBKS, which made a rousing start to IPL 2026, has seen its cracks exposed. The Shreyas Iyer-led side masked its weaknesses by consistently outbatting opponents in the first half of the 19th edition, but since the time the rivals uncovered them, the Punjab outfit has been on a downward spiral.

The 2025 runner-up has plenty of holes to plug in the bowling and fielding departments. The bowlers have leaked runs at approximately 10.6 runs per over, the worst average economy rate in the league as of Tuesday. Kings have conceded 200 or more seven times already this season, besides the 195 they gave away against Mumbai Indians.

Wicket-taking is another area that requires immediate repair. Only left-arm pacer Arshdeep Singh (13) has scalped 10 or more so far. Compared to the rest of the top-four teams — Gujarat Titans, Royal Challengers Bengaluru and Sunrisers Hyderabad — that have at least three bowlers with 10 or more scalps, PBKS has been well behind par.

Arshdeep, despite being the side’s top wicket-taker, is battling for consistency, while his pace partner Marco Jansen has hardly posed a threat. Leggie Yuzvendra Chahal is not trusted enough in spite of being the lone specialist spinner for most part of the campaign.

Poor fielding, especially dropped catches which have proved harmful, has also massively contributed to PBKS’ downfall. If Kings’ butter-fingered fielders had come up with an improved show against Sunrisers Hyderabad and Delhi Capitals, the team may not find itself in the dire situation it is in now.

PBKS has to act quick and smart if it harbours hopes of advancing to the playoffs.

The IPL 2026 playoffs are just a little over two weeks away, but Punjab Kings appears to be making a fresh start. Given that top-four contender PBKS has hit a roadblock with three successive losses, it may not be a bad thing to do.

Kings fast-bowling coach James Hopes, who described the defeats as “missteps”, backed the Shreyas Iyer-captained side to fire in the ‘new tournament’ within the 19th edition. “It is a little bit of a hiccup,” Hopes said ahead of the fixture against Delhi Capitals.

“Any team which thinks that it can sail all the way without losing a game is kidding itself. For us, the tournament starts now. We are about three weeks of good cricket away from giving ourselves a chance to win the title,” added the Australian.

He, however, insisted that PBKS was not putting itself under pressure by thinking too far ahead. “We have to focus on what is next — the match against Capitals.”

Changes on the cards?

Hopes said that the return of Afghanistan all-rounder Azmatullah Omarzai provided the think-tank the option of fielding two specialist spinners in Yuzvendra Chahal and Harpreet Brar.

Omarzai had flown back home and was unavailable for a few matches because of the demise of his mother. “With Omarzai back, we now have the opportunity to switch things up a little bit and still carry our fast-bowling [resources]. It is nice to have a full squad to pick from. As for Harpreet, he performs whenever he gets a game,” Hopes added.

Comfort has eluded Delhi Capitals at home in IPL’s 19th edition. The Axar Patel-led franchise has won just one out of five matches at the Arun Jaitley Stadium. On its visits to other venues, it has fared much better, notching up three wins in five games.

Contributing to the travails at home has been the large deviation in the nature of surfaces, hindering DC from cultivating a consistent style of play in its backyard.

The last three matches in the national capital make for pertinent examples. Having engaged in a run-fest against Punjab Kings on a featherbed where Shreyas Iyer’s side chased down a record 265 on April 25, 2026, Capitals’ duel against Royal Challengers Bengaluru just two days later swung to the other extreme.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Josh Hazlewood extracted swing and seam movement, reducing the host to eight for six inside four overs. DC folded up for 75 and lost by nine wickets.

On Tuesday (May 5, 2026) night, the strip in use was on the slower side. DC’s batters couldn’t adapt quickly enough, allowing Chennai Super Kings to register an eight-wicket victory.

DC head coach Hemang Badani conceded that the lack of homogeneity with the pitches at home wasn’t ideal. At the same time, the 49-year-old explicitly stated that the franchises didn’t have a role in the preparation of pitches.

“We don’t have any control over the surfaces. There is a clear mandate from the BCCI that it looks after the surfaces and it is the one which ensures that no local side benefits. You play on what is presented to you,” Badani told reporters.

“Yes, it’s been a bit of an up-and-down curve for us to understand what we are going to get in Delhi. I think the whole competition is quite neutral that way. But ideally, yes, you want to have some consistency.”

After a cherished stint as the runaway leader, Punjab Kings has seen its surge grind to a halt in recent outings. Despite PBKS showing signs of vulnerability, assistant coach Brad Haddin struck an upbeat tone ahead of the clash with Sunrisers Hyderabad.

“Tournament cricket is all about playing your best right at the end and that’s what we’re striving for all the time. We’re striving for that perfect result and perfect game. When we find that, we’ll be a hard team to beat,” Haddin said.

Punjab Kings losing its first match of the IPL 2026 after remaining unbeaten for seven games is a reality check. Still, there’s no doom and gloom in the dressing room, fast-bowling coach James Hopes said after the loss to Rajasthan Royals here at the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Stadium on Tuesday (April 28, 2026).

“We’ve been flying, winning games, everyone’s happy, the environment is great. But you’re not going to go through the IPL without losing a game,” Hopes told the media post the six-wicket defeat, defending a 222-run total.

In an alternate universe, Shreyas Iyer and Ricky Ponting could have still been the men in charge at Delhi Capitals. Shreyas spent seven seasons at the franchise and led it to its first and only IPL final in 2020. Ponting was head coach then and also lent his services for seven years.

In both cases, the exits didn’t appear entirely amicable. When a shoulder injury ruled Shreyas out of the first half of the 2021 season, Rishabh Pant became the stand-in skipper. The middle-order batter from Mumbai, however, wasn’t handed back the leadership reins once he regained fitness for the second half, and subsequently parted ways altogether. With Ponting, who was coach from 2018 to 2024, Capitals attributed the Australian’s lack of availability in India through the year as a sore point.

Cut to the present, DC can only cast a wistful sigh at those calls as Shreyas and Ponting return to the Arun Jaitley Stadium as captain and coach of a red-hot Punjab Kings for Saturday’s clash. Since their reunion at PBKS in 2025, they have transformed a floundering unit into a formidable force, enabling it to exude the flair and aggression that characterises the duo. After a runner-up finish in 2025, Punjab has been just as dominant this season, notching up five wins in six matches (one no-result).

Punjab Kings remained unbeaten and consolidated its position at the top of the IPL standings with a commanding 54-run win over Lucknow Super Giants at the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh Stadium on Sunday.

The PBKS bowlers rose in unison after Priyansh Arya and Cooper Connolly put on a blistering 182-run second-wicket partnership off just 80 balls to power the host to 254 for seven, the highest score of the season. In reply LSG was standing at 61, with Ayush Badoni’s promotion as opener working to an extent, before V. Vyshak dismissed him off the last ball of the PowerPlay.

Punjab Kings fast bowling coach James Hopes, who has had a long association with Shreyas Iyer in the IPL, believes the key to the India batter’s recent success is his ability to identify his shortcomings.

“He is very aware of what his perceived weaknesses were over the years, and he comes into this season having nailed them… Once he finds his way back into the Indian team, you will see the batter he is going to be for the rest of his career. A world-class short-format batter and someone who could fit into long-format cricket pretty easily,” Hopes, who has also spent three years with Shreyas as a coach at Delhi Capitals, said.

The former Australian all-rounder also hailed his captaincy, under which PBKS reached the final last year. “From a captaincy viewpoint, he has got a lot of experience. He was very young when he was captaining Delhi, and he is more experienced; he is very well planned, and he still follows his gut. When he is with the team, he is also one of the boys; he really endears himself to the group.”