Six games, no defeats: how Shreyas Iyer's Punjab Kings quietly broke an IPL record that stood for a decade
For most of the last ten years, the phrase "Punjab and unbeaten" has been a punchline. PBKS, in whichever form the franchise took, were the IPL's great almost-team. Ownership changes, captaincy reshuffles, auction splurges, coaches in and out. Every year the fans were told the foundation was finally there, and every year the season caved in somewhere around the middle.
This is not that year. Not yet. Shreyas Iyer's side are now unbeaten from their first six matches of IPL 2026, five wins and a no-result, and in doing so they have broken the longest unbeaten start to a season in the tournament's history. The previous high water mark was Kings XI Punjab's five-match unbeaten start in 2014, matched by Rajasthan Royals in 2015. Both of those sides were beaten in their sixth. This Punjab Kings team kept going.
A captain who has done this before
Iyer is the reason most people keep giving for the turnaround, and there is substance to it. He is the only player to have captained three different franchises to an IPL final, most recently lifting the title with Kolkata Knight Riders in 2024. He has arrived in Mullanpur with a clear idea of how he wants his side to bat and bowl, and a dressing room that seems to believe him.
"For this year, the manifestation is to win the IPL," he said before the season started. "I just want to put it out there in the universe that I want to lift the trophy." Six games in, it does not sound like a boast. It sounds like a plan.
A top order that keeps finding another gear
The batting has done the loudest work. Priyansh Arya's 93 off 37 balls against Lucknow Super Giants on April 19 was the innings that most cleanly captured what this team is: explosive, unafraid, oddly composed. He struck at over 250 and put on 182 with Cooper Connolly for the second wicket off only 80 balls. Connolly's 87 from 46 balls, eight fours and seven sixes, was the kind of supporting knock that makes a dangerous partnership. Punjab finished on 254 for 7, the highest total of IPL 2026 to that point, surpassing the 250 Royal Challengers Bengaluru had posted earlier in the season.
That was the exclamation mark. But the more useful piece of information is that Punjab have not relied on any single batter to get them there. Prabhsimran Singh's opening form has been a story of its own, Iyer has been happy to take the middle overs himself, and Connolly has looked the part as the overseas all-rounder this side has been missing for years.
Ricky Ponting and the quieter structural work
Head coach Ricky Ponting has called the win over LSG their biggest so far, and it is tempting to focus on the batting numbers and leave it there. The more interesting shift has been with the ball. Punjab have defended a total, chased a total, and absorbed pressure in a rain-affected no-result. The bowling has not been one-dimensional, and the fielding has tightened into something recognisable.
None of this means the trophy is coming. The back half of an IPL season is long, travel is brutal, and the teams below them have plenty of cricket left to play. Punjab Kings have also had the slight kindness of a net run rate of +1.420 because the wins have been emphatic, and run-rate tends to crumble faster than points when form dips.
What they have already done, though, is make themselves the team the rest of the competition has to plan around. That has not been a sentence you could write about Punjab Kings in a long time.
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