Mumbai: Moments after play ended, Ricky Ponting sat all by himself in the dugout, head slumped in his arms and eyes staring ahead. Shreyas Iyer, for a change through the evening, wore a smile with the mic in hand.
“There’s always light at the end of the tunnel,” he said. Ponting and Iyer, coach and captain of Punjab Kings (PBKS), must be left pondering how they got stuck in this tunnel in the first place.
It has turned so dark, after their 23-run defeat to Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB)—the champions became the first team to qualify for the IPL playoffs—that the wheels of a once unbeatable joyride appear to have come off.
This has been one of the most astonishing collapses of any team in any tournament. Their sixth defeat on the trot by the hills of Dharamsala slid the 2025 finalists towards the edge of elimination, after the high of six victories and 13 points (one from a washout) at a stretch.
How they’d love one point now. Somehow, from somewhere.
It wasn’t coming on Sunday. Not against this RCB unit that is playing every bit like the defending champions, table-toppers and the team to beat at the season’s business end.
At the halfway point, Punjab carried the team-to-beat aura. Their batting line-up was scoring 200s for fun and chasing 265 with ease. And so their bowling, or catching and fielding, was a footnote no matter how it did.
Yet a team so heavily reliant on one facet was bound to get a wake-up call at some point. Once they did, Punjab haven’t been able to come out of the nightmare. It carried on against an all-round RCB in an almost must-win tie. Their bowling continued to take a beating, and their batters and openers, chief architects of their tall scores this season, had an off day chasing 222/4.
RCB’s collective batting show, led by Venkatesh Iyer’s unbeaten 40-ball 73, was backed by the bowling smarts of Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Rasikh Salam and Josh Hazlewood.
Bhuvneshwar removed both openers in his first spell, getting Priyansh Arya to mishit one to mid-on and Prabhsimran Singh to bottom edge to slip. When Salam found Shreyas’s outside edge the next over, the wind in Punjab’s sails had been sucked out early.
Shashank Singh and Marcus Stoinis provided some late spark for the hosts, but against the death bowling class of Hazlewood and Bhuvneshwar, it turned out to be but a flicker. A flicker of hope is what Punjab will have to live with now ahead of their final league match, following yet another off-colour bowling effort.
Arshdeep Singh and Azmatullah Omarzai asked Virat Kohli (58, 37b) a couple of questions outside off, to which he quickly found an answer with a lofted six. Punjab resorted to spin early, and summoned left-armer Harpreet Brar. Jacob Bethell cut the first ball to the boundary, and chopped on the second delivered from over the wicket.
Devdutt Padikkal launched his momentum-infusing innings (45, 25b) with a six, and also welcomed Yuzvendra Chahal into the attack the same way. Padikkal took a liking to spinners and Kohli’s wrists to pace on the ball, flicking the Punjab pacers for some sublime boundaries.
Shreyas used six bowlers in eight overs before Brar was brought in again. The comeback-man dismissed another left-hander, from around the wicket this time to get Padikkal caught at cover.
RCB were going at 10s then, and Punjab slipped in a couple of quiet overs of spin. That’s when Shreyas perhaps missed a trick by going back to pace. Struggling initially, Venkatesh found his hitting rhythm while Kohli’s flicks had never left.
The flick would soon be his undoing against Chahal, although by then the visitors were on course for a 200-plus score. Venkatesh was now ramping and romping boundaries, and in the company of Tim David (28, 12b), gave his side 65 runs in the last five overs.
Brief scores: RCB 222/4 (V Kohli 58, D Padikkal 45, V Iyer 73*, H Brar 2/35). PBKS 199/8 (C Connolly 37, M Stoinis 37, Shashank Singh 56, Bhuvneshwar 2/38, R Salam 3/36). RCB won by 23 runs.
