Priyansh Arya's 93 off 37 and a Connolly masterclass power PBKS to 254 and a 54-run win over LSG
There are matches where the chase is set up to be a fair fight, and there are matches where the target is done with by the tenth over of the innings that builds it. Punjab Kings’ 254 for seven against Lucknow Super Giants at Mullanpur on Sunday was the second kind. Priyansh Arya’s 93 from 37 balls and Cooper Connolly’s 87 off 46 ripped a first-innings hole that LSG could not climb out of, and Shreyas Iyer’s side walked off 54 runs to the good with their unbeaten season intact.
The scoreboard makes the night look like a runaway. The match itself was closer to a demolition job from the fifth over onwards. Prabhsimran Singh fell early. After that the home side scored as if the 200-mark was already a safety net rather than a target.
Priyansh Arya turns a good innings into a record
Priyansh Arya has already announced himself this season. On Sunday he went past KL Rahul’s PBKS record for the most fifties scored in under 20 balls by a Punjab batter and kept going. Nine sixes. Four boundaries. A strike rate of 251.35. He had reached 93 when the innings started to lose its rhythm, and he was out in the search for a hundred that looked inevitable up to that point. The ball was clearing the stands more often than it was landing in the outfield.
Cooper Connolly was the senior partner in the stand in name only. The Australian hit eight fours and seven sixes for his 87, and the 182-run second-wicket partnership tore up everything Rishabh Pant’s bowling unit tried. M Siddharth eventually got Arya for the first breakthrough that meant anything. By then Connolly was still there and Marcus Stoinis was coming in with a licence to swing.
Stoinis did, and so did Shashank Singh, whose unbeaten 17 off six balls was a cameo designed to push the total past 250. The 29 not out from Stoinis in 16 balls kept the momentum going through the last two overs. PBKS finished on 254 for seven. Prince Yadav and M Siddharth took two wickets apiece for LSG, but the bowling figures across the board made for difficult reading. There was no spell that slowed PBKS down.
Pant and Marsh start quickly, but the gap is too big
Chasing 255 needs at least three batters hitting the kind of tempo Arya and Connolly set in the first innings. Lucknow managed two, and only for short bursts. Mitchell Marsh and Ayush Badoni started aggressively. Badoni fell for a brisk 35 off 21 and LSG were already in catch-up mode. Marsh’s 40 from 28 and Aiden Markram’s 42 off 22 kept the chase alive for a while, but the required rate kept climbing and the wickets kept coming at the wrong moments.
Rishabh Pant played himself into form with 43 off 23. Four sixes in the innings, the kind of knock that would have decided a tighter game. On Sunday it was a cameo on a stage that had already been set by someone else. Marco Jansen removed Markram, the final handbrake, and LSG closed on 200 for five. A respectable total in almost any other context. On this night, 54 short.
Punjab’s unbeaten run keeps rolling
PBKS remain the one side with no defeat on their record. Shreyas Iyer’s tactical calls have been smart all season, but on Sunday he barely had to make any. He won the batting lottery with the way his openers came out, and he managed a bowling attack that only needed to hold its shape. The question now is whether anyone in the league has the attack to stop this batting order on a true surface.
Lucknow slide further into mid-table and will be looking at a rebuilding job for the back half of their campaign. Pant’s return to scoring form is a positive. The bowling is where the work needs to happen. Giving up 254 is a nightmare. Giving up 254 with two of your three frontline pacers conceding over 50 is closer to a crisis.
Mullanpur has become one of the most intimidating grounds in IPL 2026, and Priyansh Arya now has a claim on being the most valuable uncapped batter in the tournament. On this evidence Punjab do not need anyone to come into form. They just need the rest of the league to catch them, and nobody looks particularly close.
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