Punjab head to Ahmedabad to bury this week's loss as Gujarat hunt three in a row
Punjab Kings travel to Ahmedabad on Sunday evening looking to bury their first defeat of the season, while Gujarat Titans go in chasing a third straight win at the Narendra Modi Stadium. Match 46 of IPL 2026 is the pick of a doubleheader, kicking off at 7:30pm with both sides eyeing the playoffs from very different positions on the table.
Punjab without the unbeaten badge
Shreyas Iyer's Punjab Kings still sit top with 13 points from eight matches, but the 2026 honeymoon ended on April 28 in New Chandigarh. Rajasthan Royals chased 223, with Vaibhav Suryavanshi setting it up at the top and Donovan Ferreira finishing it off, and PBKS lost a six-wicket result that ended a seven-match unbeaten start to the season. Ricky Ponting's side had built the longest unbeaten run any team has put together at the start of an IPL, including the chase of 265 against Delhi Capitals on April 25 that broke the men's T20 record for a successful pursuit.
That kind of streak ends only once. The question this week is whether the loss has shaken Punjab's belief that they should be playing a Qualifier and not a do-or-die Eliminator. Iyer is among the league's leading run-scorers with 309, Prabhsimran Singh has 346 and Priyansh Arya 283, and the Iyer-Ponting batting plan has been about as comfortable batting first as second. A win in Ahmedabad takes Punjab to fifteen points and effectively confirms a top-two finish.
Gujarat are back in the picture
Gujarat Titans were drifting in mid-table a fortnight ago. Two consecutive wins have rebuilt the season. They beat Chennai Super Kings by eight wickets at Chepauk on April 26, with Sai Sudharsan's 87 off 46 balls leading a chase that flattened CSK's bowling, then took down Royal Challengers Bengaluru by four wickets at home on April 30 with Jason Holder, Rashid Khan and Arshad Khan combining to keep the visitors down to a chaseable total. Gujarat are now fifth on ten points, two points behind the three sides above them in the chasing pack and back inside the playoff conversation.
Home conditions at the Narendra Modi Stadium will help. Forecast highs of around 41°C and an evening dew will reward whoever bowls first if the toss goes that way. Kagiso Rabada and Mohammed Siraj have led Gujarat's pace attack across the spring, and a Punjab top three of Prabhsimran Singh, Priyansh Arya and Iyer is the kind of challenge that decides whether Gujarat are genuine playoff contenders or a side that beat the right teams in the right week.
The match-ups inside the match
The headline contest is the Punjab opening pair against Rabada and Siraj inside the powerplay. Prabhsimran and Priyansh Arya have given PBKS the most aggressive starts in the competition, and Rabada's lengths in Ahmedabad have been disciplined enough to test them. Behind it, the Buttler-Gill double act for Gujarat with the bat will need to stand up to a Punjab attack that has Arshdeep Singh, Yuzvendra Chahal and Marco Jansen across phases, and the contest between Rashid Khan and the Punjab middle order in the middle overs is the one that often decides games at this venue.
Punjab will start as slight favourites for their consistency, but Gujarat's home record and the way the dew has played in Ahmedabad evenings make this closer than the table suggests. A loss for Punjab does not change the playoff arithmetic much, while a win for Gujarat would confirm a return to the top half. Either way, the team batting second has the night.
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