The top half of the IPL 2026 points table is an utter logjam.Punjab Kings (PBKS), unbeaten through their first seven games, have now lost two in a row. And the team that beat them on Sunday night, Gujarat Titans (GT) have won three in a row. All around the IPL, teams that had led secure lives in the top four have endured setbacks over the last few days.

And so the big squeeze. PBKS remain at No. 1, but they’re only one point above GT at No. 5.

GT, however, are the only team in the top five with a negative net run rate (NRR). This may have something to do with their style of play: they rely on their bowlers to ensure their batters don’t have to score at the frenetic rates of some other teams, but that means their margins of victory tend to be less emphatic.

On Sunday, their margin was wafer-thin – one ball remaining – despite the fact that they dominated virtually from start to finish. Their Test-match pace trio of Mohammed Siraj, Kagiso Rabada amd Jason Holder bowled hard lengths on a pitch that offered steep bounce and plentiful seam movement from those lengths, and reduced PBKS to 47 for 5. Suryansh Shedge  and Marcus Stoinis ensured that PBKS recovered to post 163 for 9, but this was still very much a GT kind of target, perfect for their style of top-order play.

A measured half-century from B Sai Sudarsan laid the perfect platform, but GT’s scoring rate remained somewhere in the region of their original required rate right through their chase. And suddenly, they ended up needing 11 off the final over. Washington Sundar sealed victory with a penultimate-ball six, but on another day, this could have so easily been the story of GT sleepwalking to defeat.

But the major story was this: for the third match in a row, GT pulled off the trademark GT victory. Straightjacketing their oppositions with the ball, and chasing down sub-170 targets with significant contributions from one or two of their top three.

Varun Chakravarthy and Sunil Narine thrived on a slower-than-usual Hyderabad pitch to halt Sunrisers Hyderabad’s five-match winning streak in IPL 2026. Varun and Narine took five wickets between them to have SRH tumbling from 105 for 1 in the ninth over to 165 all out in 19 overs. Along the way, Narine joined the IPL’s 200 wicket club.

Kolkata Knight Riders shaved 71 runs off the target in the powerplay and eventually sealed their third successive win, with seven wickets and ten balls to spare. Angkrish Raguvanshi anchored the chase with a career-best 59 off 47 balls.

Travis Head flew out of the blocks as usual, clattering Vaibhav Arora for four fours in the second over, after SRH had opted to bat. Head didn’t let the momentum let up against Narine, slog-sweeping him for six over square leg and then pumping him over mid-on for four in the third over.

Narine’s opening over was much tighter. Bowling the first over for only the fourth time in his IPL career, he kept Abhishek Sharma to nine runs.

Head also lined up Cameron Green and went onto bring up his half-century off 22 balls. Kartik Tyagi bested Abhishek with a hard-length delivery that was clocked at almost 145kph, but Head maintained a high tempo, which was central to SRH passing 70 in the powerplay for the sixth time in ten innings in this IPL.

Head thumped Varun for 17 off five balls before the mystery spinner hit back to have him holing out in the ninth over. Head’s dismissal triggered an irreparable SRH collapse. Varun proceeded to dismiss debutant R Smaran, who had come in for the unwell Nitish Kumar Reddy, and Aniket Verma.

Once the ball grew older, it wasn’t easy to hit through the line. But that didn’t stop SRH’s batters from staying true to their uber-aggressive philosophy. Both Smaran and Aniket fell while trying to find the boundary or clear it.

After enduring a tough end to the T20 World Cup and an equally tough start to the IPL, Varun has found some form, picking up at least two wickets in each of his last four games.

Heinrich Klaasen started brightly for SRH, but a one-handed screamer from Rovman Powell, a bona fide contender for the catch of the season, stopped him on 11.

Narine then became the first overseas bowler – and third overall after Yuzvendra Chahal and Bhuvneshwar Kumar – to 200 IPL wickets when he knocked over Salil Arora with a beauty that drifted in and swerved away to hit the top of off stump. In the same over, Narine removed Ishan Kishan for 42 off 29 balls with a regulation offbreak, leaving them on 148 for 7 in 16 overs. SRH added 17 to their tally before they were bowled out for the first time this season.

Finn Allen, who had replaced his New Zealand compatriot Tim Seifert, came out attacking in the chase, smacking Pat Cummins for three fours and two sixes. Cummins, however, had the last laugh, having Allen caught at deep midwicket with a delivery that stopped in the pitch.

Allen’s early assault carried KKR to 71 in the powerplay – only twice have they scored more runs during this phase in IPL 2026.

Rahane and Raghuvanshi could afford to sit back and just bunt the ball into the gaps. They forged an 84-run stand for the fourth wicket before SRH’s Impact Player Sakib Hussain bounced Rahane out for 43 off 36 balls. Left-arm wristspinner Shivang Kumar created another opening by snagging Raghuvanshi with a wrong’un. Rinku Singh, however, got the job done for KKR along with Green.

Brief scores:
Kolkata Knight Riders 169 for 3 in 18.2 overs (Angkrish Raghuvanshi 59, Ajinkya Rahane 43, Finn Allen 29, Rinku Singh 22*; Pat Cummins 1-47, Shivang Kumar 1-31, Sakib Hussain  1-17) beat Sunrisers Hyderabad 165 in 19 overs (Abhishek Sharma 15, Travis Head 61, Ishan Kishan 42, Heinrich Klaasen 11, Pat Cummins 10; Sunil Narine 2-31, Vaibhav Arora 1-25, Kartik Tyagi 2-30, Cameron Green 1-34,  Varun Chakravarthy 3-36, Anukul Roy 1-08  ) by seven wickets

[Cricinfo]

Peshawar Zalmi were crowned PSL 2026 champions as they routed Hyderabad Kingsmen by five wickets on the back of Aaron Hardie’s all-round performance. Hardie’s career-best figures of 4 for 27 skittled Kingsmen for 129, and his unbeaten 56 off 39 took Zalmi over the line after an early stutter threatened to derail the run chase. Zalmi have now become only the third team to win multiple PSL titles – their last triumph being in 2017 – after three-time winners Islamabad United and Lahore Qalandars.

It was a miraculous turnaround by Kingsmen that set their final with Zalmi as no team before them had ever reached the playoffs after losing their first four matches of the season. They had won seven of their last eight matches to reach this far, but having come in touching distance of the coveted trophy, their batters unravelled and registered the lowest first-innings total in a PSL final.

Babar Azam’s decision to insert Kingsmen was influenced by the green tinge on the pitch, but his bowlers did not need to rely much on the surface as Kingsmen threw their wickets one after another. Their entire middle order was wiped amid an awful collapse, during which they lost four wickets for only two runs in eight balls. Two of those wickets were run outs.

Kingsmen had a decent start and sat comfortably on 69 for 2 at the close of powerplay. Their innings, however, spiralled out of control three balls later when Sufiyan Muqeem had Usman Khan plumb in front. A mix-up between Saim Ayub and Irfan Khan resulted in the latter’s run out three balls later, and Glenn Maxwell was caught at mid-on the very next ball as he tried to slap a back-of-a-length delivery from Nahid Rana. The situation further aggravated for Kingsmen when Michael Bracwell’s direct hit accounted for Kusal Perera in the eighth over. The run out resulted in a brief delay and drama as Perera complained to the on-field umpires to have been obstructed by Rana, but the third umpire deemed it to be a legitimate wicket.

That Kingsmen had something to bowl with was because of Ayub, who scored his maiden half-century of the season. The left-hander made 54 off 50 after walking out to the middle in the second over. He got off to a flier, scoring 30 off 14. His 35-run stand for the second wicket with Marnus Labuschagne, who made 20 off 12, seemed promising before the Kingsmen captain became first of the four Hardie’s scalps.

Ayub unfurled his signature flick off Rana in the sixth over and drove him through the covers next ball as he stamped his authority over the opposition, but he had to rein in after the collapse. The longest that a partnership lasted in the innings was 24 balls, it was between Ayub and Hunain Shah for the eighth wicket. Hardie struck twice in the 18th over, accounting for Ayub at the start and Akif Javed towards the end to bag his first T20 four-for.

Mohammad Ali and Kingsmen celebrated passionately when he had Babar caught behind to go along with Mohammad Haris’ wicket in a dream first over. Hunain, the star of the second eliminator, got Kusal Mendis in the fourth over and Akif sent Bracewell packing soon after as Zalmi reeled at 40 for 4.

Hardie launched a counterattack, smashing Hunain for three boundaries, to close the 53-run powerplay. It was the start of a match-winning 115-run partnership with Abdul Samad, who made 48 off 34. The pair milked the bowlers and picked up boundaries occasionally in a magnificent rearguard effort, which took the game away from Kingsmen.

Towards the end, Samad seemed to be clobbering boundaries for fun. He clubbed Ali for a six and a four before he was caught at deep midwicket trying to seal the chase with a maximum with five runs to go. Victory was secured in the next over as Farhan Yousuf steered a bouncer from Hunain to the fine leg boundary.

Brief scores:
Peshawar Zalmi 130 for 5 in 15.2 overs (Aaron Hardie 56*, Abdul Samad 48; Mohammad Ali 3-38, Akif Javed 1-29, Hunain Shah 1-26 ) beat Hyderabad Kingsmen 129 in 18 overs (Marnus Labuschagne 20, Maaz Sadaqat 11, Saim Ayub 54, Hasan Khan 12; Mohamed Basit 1-22, Aaron  Hardie 4-27, Nahid Rana 2-22, Sufiyan Moqim 1-23)by five wickets

[Cricinfo]