Mullanpur stadium: pitch report, records and stats at the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh ground
The Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium at Mullanpur spent two IPL seasons as one of the lowest-scoring grounds in the league, then became one of the highest. Here is the full record before it stages its first men’s ODI on 3 October.
Apr 18, 2024 · Updated Sep 19, 2026
The Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium at Mullanpur, on the northern edge of Chandigarh, is the Punjab Cricket Association’s new home and Punjab Kings’ base in the IPL. It seats 38,000, it staged its first match in March 2024, and on 3 October 2026 it stages its first men’s one-day international, the third of India’s three against West Indies.
Its reputation, built in 2024 and 2025, is of a ground where the ball does a bit and totals stay modest. The 2026 season said the opposite, loudly. Here is what the ball-by-ball record actually shows, across 17 IPL matches, one Test, one men’s T20I and two women’s ODIs.
Mullanpur stadium at a glance
| Detail | Mullanpur stadium |
|---|---|
| Full name | Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium |
| Location | Mullanpur, New Chandigarh, Punjab |
| Capacity | 38,000 (some listings say 33,000) |
| Owner | Punjab Cricket Association |
| Established | 2021, at a cost of about 230 crore rupees |
| Home teams | Punjab, Punjab women, Punjab Kings |
| First IPL match | 23 March 2024, Delhi Capitals v Punjab Kings |
| First international | 14 September 2025, India v Australia, women’s ODI |
| First Test | 6 June 2026, India v Afghanistan |
| First men’s ODI | 3 October 2026, India v West Indies |
The ground is named after Yadavindra Singh, the last ruling Maharaja of Patiala, who played one Test for India in 1934 and later ran Indian cricket’s administration. Two of its stands were unveiled on 11 December 2025 in the names of Harmanpreet Kaur, who had just captained India to their first women’s ODI World Cup, and Yuvraj Singh. The outfield is laid on sand rather than soil, over a herringbone drainage system, which is why the ground advertises a turnaround of 25 to 30 minutes after rain. The square itself is red soil.
Mullanpur pitch report: what the scoring actually says
Take the first-innings average in full-length IPL matches at the ground, season by season, and set it against the league average for the same season. The gap is the story.
| Season | Matches | Mullanpur avg | IPL avg |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 5 | 167.4 | 190.1 |
| 2025 | 6 | 170.2 | 192.4 |
| 2026 | 6 | 219.0 | 195.8 |
For two seasons Mullanpur ran about 22 runs below the league. In 2026 it ran 23 runs above it. That is a swing of roughly 45 runs relative to the rest of the IPL in a single year, and it is the single most useful thing to know before a match here.
The 2026 detail is not a rounding artefact either. Nine of the twelve innings played at the ground that season passed 200. The lowest first-innings total all year was 162. Punjab Kings made 254 for 7 against Lucknow Super Giants on 19 April, the highest total the ground has seen, and Rajasthan Royals chased 223 with four balls to spare on 28 April, the highest successful chase here. Across all 17 IPL matches the ground has produced 311 sixes and runs at 9.54 an over.
Two caveats belong with that. Six matches is a small sample, and one hot season does not make a permanent surface. The counterweight is that the flip is not simply league-wide inflation: the IPL average moved 3.4 runs between 2025 and 2026, and Mullanpur moved 48.8.
Batting first or chasing at Mullanpur
Nothing in the results favours either side of the coin. Teams batting first have won eight of the 17 IPL matches, teams chasing nine. The toss winner has won ten of 17, and captains have overwhelmingly wanted to field, choosing to chase 12 times out of 17. Fielding first has returned seven wins from those 12, batting first three from five.
Read that alongside the scoring table and the picture is a ground that has become easier to bat on without becoming easier to chase on, which is what you would expect when both innings get bigger together. The 2026 matches produced the three highest successful chases at the ground, all of them 219 or more.
IPL records at the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh Stadium
| Record | Figure | Match |
|---|---|---|
| Highest total | 254/7 | Punjab Kings v Lucknow, 19 Apr 2026 |
| Lowest total | 95 all out | Kolkata v Punjab Kings, 15 Apr 2025 |
| Highest chase | 228/4 | Rajasthan v Punjab Kings, 28 Apr 2026 |
| Highest score | 104 off 53, Shubman Gill | Gujarat v Rajasthan, 29 May 2026 |
| Fastest hundred | 103 off 41, Priyansh Arya | Punjab Kings v Chennai, 8 Apr 2025 |
| Best bowling | 4/28, Yuzvendra Chahal | Punjab Kings v Kolkata, 15 Apr 2025 |
| Most runs | 340, Priyansh Arya | Across 2025 and 2026 |
| Most wickets | 15, Arshdeep Singh | Across three seasons |
The lowest total on that list is attached to the ground’s best-known match. Punjab Kings were bowled out for 111 on 15 April 2025 and then bowled Kolkata out for 95, which remains the lowest score successfully defended in IPL history. Chahal took 4 for 28 in that game. For context on the other end of the scale, the ground’s 228 chase is still short of the biggest chases the league has seen.
Mullanpur has also been trusted with knockout cricket unusually early in its life. It staged Qualifier 1 and the Eliminator in 2025, and the Eliminator and Qualifier 2 in 2026: four playoff matches in two seasons, more than most grounds get in a decade. None of them produced a home team, since Punjab Kings lost Qualifier 1 on their own square to Royal Challengers Bengaluru. The full list of finals and champions is in our IPL winners list.
Internationals at Mullanpur
| Date | Format | Match | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 14 Sep 2025 | Women’s ODI | India v Australia | Australia by 8 wkts |
| 17 Sep 2025 | Women’s ODI | India v Australia | India by 102 runs |
| 11 Dec 2025 | Men’s T20I | India v South Africa | South Africa by 51 runs |
| 6 Jun 2026 | Test | India v Afghanistan | India by an inns and 300 |
The Test is the outlier in every direction, and it gave the ground a national record to keep. India declared on 564 for 8, Shubman Gill making 126 and KL Rahul 100, then bowled Afghanistan out for 152 and 112 inside three days. The winning margin, an innings and 300 runs, is India’s largest in Test cricket. Manav Suthar took 6 for 33 on debut in the first innings and the match award; Afghanistan’s Mohammad Saleem finished with 6 for 140, which tells you how the surface treated spin once the ball was old.
The two 50-over games do. India made 281 for 7 and 292 against Australia in September 2025, and Australia chased the first of those down with 35 balls in hand. Both first innings cleared 280 on a ground that was still, at that point, producing IPL totals in the 160s.
Punjab Kings at their new home
Punjab have played 14 of the 17 IPL matches at Mullanpur and won six. The trend runs the same way as the scoring: one win from five in 2024, two from five in 2025, three from four in 2026. Priyansh Arya’s 340 runs and Arshdeep Singh’s 15 wickets are both home records, and both belong to the seasons in which the team started winning here.
How Mullanpur compares with the old Mohali ground
Punjab’s previous home, the IS Bindra Stadium at Mohali, is about a 45-minute drive away and has a far longer record: 59 full-length IPL matches at a first-innings average of 168.9. That is the number most people still carry in their heads for Punjab cricket, and it matched Mullanpur’s first two seasons almost exactly. It no longer describes what happens at the new ground.
The other new Indian ground of this cycle has gone the other way entirely. Vadodara’s Kotambi Stadium opened in December 2024 on a women’s ODI, and of the 21 matches it has staged above domestic level, 20 have been women’s cricket. Mullanpur opened on the IPL and got its first women’s international eighteen months later.
Among the 2026 IPL venues, Mullanpur’s 219.0 ranked fourth, behind Jaipur’s 225.5, Dharamsala’s 221.5 and the Wankhede’s 219.7, and ahead of Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Delhi and Chepauk, where the first-innings average has barely moved in a decade.
India v West Indies at Mullanpur on 3 October
The third ODI starts at 14:00 IST on Saturday 3 October, and it is the first men’s one-day international the ground has held. India, captained by Shubman Gill, play the first two at Thiruvananthapuram on 27 September and Guwahati on 30 September, so Mullanpur could be hosting a dead rubber or a decider.
An early-October afternoon start in Punjab brings dew into the second innings, which is the one thing that could push this ground back toward the chase. The only 50-over evidence it has is the two women’s ODIs, and those split one each way. For a ground with a record this short, the honest answer is that the 2026 IPL scoring is the best guide available, and it points at a big first-innings total being par rather than decisive.