From record chase to four straight losses: how PBKS's IPL 2026 came unstuck
Two weeks ago Punjab Kings looked like the team most likely to top the IPL 2026 group stage. They had six wins from their first seven, the highest successful T20 chase in history sitting on their CV, and Shreyas Iyer playing like a captain who could not be moved. Four games on and all of them losses, that lead has shrunk to a 4th-place hold on 13 points with three to play. The collapse is real, and it is not getting any easier.
The slide began on April 28, when Rajasthan Royals chased PBKS down at New Chandigarh thanks to a 77-run fifth-wicket stand off 32 balls between Donovan Ferreira and Shubham Dubey. It was their first defeat of the season, and the kind of late-overs concession that you write off as a one-off. Then May 3 in Ahmedabad: Gujarat Titans chased 167 with a ball to spare, PBKS managed only 163 for 9 against a quality attack, and the warning lights flickered on.
The Sunrisers night that hurt
The May 6 trip to Hyderabad turned the warning lights into a siren. Sunrisers piled up 235 for 4, Cooper Connolly answered with an unbeaten 107 in a 33-run defeat, and the bigger story was the field. PBKS dropped three catches, the seam attack got carted at a 235-for-4 rate, and the loss knocked them off the top of the table. The pattern was already showing: bursts of brilliance from the bat carrying a defence and a ground fielding effort that simply was not turning up.
Tonight in Dharamsala the same story repeated in a different key. PBKS posted 210 for 5 after a 78-run opening burst from Prabhsimran Singh and Priyansh Arya, Iyer added an unbeaten 59 from 36, and they still let it go. Madhav Tiwari pulled the back-half taps with 2 for 40, Axar Patel and David Miller put on the partnership that decided the match, and DC chased the 211 with six balls to spare. Four in a row.
What broke
The most obvious slip has been with the ball. SRH put on 235 in Hyderabad, DC chased 211 tonight, and even the GT defeat at Ahmedabad slipped a 167 target with a ball to spare. Arshdeep Singh has still had his nights, including 2 for 21 inside tonight's powerplay, but the support around him has thinned out. Yash Thakur went for 55 from 4 against DC. The overseas seam options have leaked when matches were turning, and the death over rhythm that defined the early run is no longer automatic.
Fielding has been the other story. Three drops effectively decided the SRH game. Cooper Connolly's run-out of Tristan Stubbs tonight was a flash of the early-season standard rather than the rule, and the difference between this PBKS team and the one that started 6 in 7 is showing up in the fielding margins as much as anywhere else.
Where the maths leaves them
13 points on 11 games still puts PBKS fourth and in the playoff places, with three matches left: Mumbai Indians at Dharamsala on May 14, Royal Challengers Bengaluru at Dharamsala on May 17, and Lucknow Super Giants away in Lucknow on May 23. Two wins from those three almost certainly seals a top-four finish; one win likely keeps them in the conversation; zero would be a slow-motion implosion of a season that started as the most exciting in years for the franchise.
The good news for PBKS supporters is that the batting is not the problem. Iyer is anchoring at fifties almost on demand, Arya keeps coming off, and Prabhsimran's fast starts are back. The harder question is whether they can stop a top-four chase from turning into a bowling and fielding rebuild on the fly, with the league phase already two-thirds done.
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