Six wins, one washout, and a captain who finally trusts his squad: Punjab Kings have built the IPL 2026 team of the season
It is a strange feeling to write about Punjab Kings being the team of the season. For most of the last decade and a half, that sentence has been a punchline. Punjab were the franchise that drafted Glenn Maxwell three times, the team that turned Wriddhiman Saha into an IPL final centurion and still lost the trophy in 2014, the side that always seemed to be one good captain away from the playoffs. Last year, under Iyer, they finally got back to the final. They lost it to Royal Challengers Bengaluru by six runs.
This year, at the halfway mark, the picture looks very different.
Punjab go into the back half of IPL 2026 with thirteen points from seven matches: six wins, one no result, no defeats. Shreyas Iyer is the first captain in IPL history to come through his opening seven games of a season unbeaten. They sit at the top of the table with the highest net run rate in the league, and they have already produced the largest successful chase in the entire history of senior T20 cricket, gunning down 265 against Delhi Capitals in 18.5 overs even after KL Rahul had made an unbeaten 152 off 67 balls for the home side.
That last detail is worth sitting with. A side scored 152 off 67 balls in an IPL game and ended up on the losing side because Punjab's batting unit kept coming.
What Iyer changed
A lot of the credit for the run has been pinned, fairly, on the dressing room culture that head coach Ricky Ponting has built since coming in last season. The Australian's fingerprints are all over how Punjab attack the powerplay and how the bowling unit holds its lengths in the middle overs. But the day-to-day shift has a lot to do with Iyer himself.
Watch him on the sideline and the change is in the small things. The bowling changes are quicker. The fielders are walked into specific positions before each ball, not waved into vague zones. When the chase is on, he does not always keep himself for the finish; he goes when the situation needs him.
Iyer has had this in him for a while. He led Delhi Capitals to a final in 2020, steered Kolkata Knight Riders to the IPL title in 2024, and got Punjab to the final last June. He is now the only captain to take three different franchises to an IPL final. What is new in 2026 is that he has a squad built specifically around how he likes to bat and bowl, with explosive Indians at the top and depth lower down. Prabhsimran Singh and Priyansh Arya have been a powerplay nightmare for opposing bowling units, and the lower order has not had to play ten frantic balls because the batters above them keep building.
A coach with no patience for excuses
Ricky Ponting is the missing piece in any honest read of the season. The Australian was famously hard on himself as a player, and he is hard on this group too. Even after Punjab confirmed their place at the top of the table, Ponting refused to let his players settle. "We've got some work to do," he said publicly, with the team flying clear at the top.
That is not the language of a coach happy with where things are. It is the language of someone who has lifted two World Cups and a couple of ICC Champions Trophy titles and knows that being top in April means nothing if the bowling unit cannot defend a par score in late May. Punjab fans have heard a lot of "we are heading in the right direction" speeches over the years. This is the first time the head coach has refused to give them one.
The opinion bit
Here is where I'll allow myself a take, because that's what this slot is for. I think Punjab Kings, in this exact form, are the most likely champions of IPL 2026. Their batting depth is the best in the league, their net run rate is comfortably the league's best, and they have already shown they can chase a total no team should ever realistically chase.
The risk is not the obvious one. They are not going to suddenly forget how to bat. The risk is the same one that bit them in last June's final: an attack that can leak runs in the back half if Yuzvendra Chahal does not pick up wickets in the middle overs. If Punjab fall short again in the playoffs, that is where it will fall apart. Solve that, and you can squint at this team and see them lifting the trophy in late May.
If they do, this is the season Punjab finally turn the running joke into a title. And if they cannot, it is at minimum the most coherent, watchable, and likeable Punjab side anyone has put together in eighteen years. After everything the franchise has put its supporters through, that on its own is something.
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