Punjab Kings continued their run in IPL 2026 as they defeated Mumbai Indians by seven wickets at the Wankhede Stadium on Thursday, April 16.
Shreyas Iyer Won the crucial toss and decided to bowl first. In the third over, Ryan Rickelton and Suryakumar Yadav were out on consecutive balls of Arshdeep Singh. However, Quinton de Kock and Naman Dheer helped them recover with a solid partnership of 122 runs off 68 balls.
Quinton de Kock returned to the Mumbai Indians jersey and scored a brilliant century. Meanwhile, Dheer scored 50 runs in 31 balls. Hardik Pandya and Tilak Verma played minor roles as the hosts finished at 195/6.
In reply, Priyansh Arya played a quickfire inning of 15 runs off nine balls before being dismissed. Cooper Connolly also failed to take advantage of the good start. However, Shreyas along with Prabhsimram Singh played a match-winning inning of 139 runs off 66 balls.
After Shreyas was out after scoring 66 runs in 35 balls, Prabhsimran scored an unbeaten 80 (39) along with Marcus Stoinis (10*) to lead the team to victory. AM Ghazanfar took two wickets but did not get much support from his fellow bowlers. PBKS won in 16.3 overs with seven wickets remaining.
talking points
1. Quinton de Kock excelled in his comeback match for MI
Quinton de Kock, playing his first match of the season, scored a fighting century against the strong bowling of Punjab Kings. The southpaw wielded his bat and remained unbeaten on 112 off 60 balls. He hit eight fours and seven sixes with a strike rate of 186.67. De Kock's form will be one of the rare hopes for Mumbai in this game.
2. Arshdeep Singh's return to form
Arshdeep Singh took only two wickets in the first four matches in IPL 2026. However, on Thursday he took two important wickets in the power play. Finally, he came back to dismiss the dangerous Sherfane Rutherford. In the end, the left-arm pacer finished with impressive figures of 3/22 from four overs in a high-scoring encounter.
3. Prabhsimran Singh, Shreyas Iyer continue their purple patch
PBKS' top four batsmen have been excellent so far. Prabhsimran Singh scored 80 runs in 39 balls with the help of 11 fours and two sixes. He batted at a strike rate of 205.13. On the other hand, it was great to see Shreyas guide him with his experience during the match-winning partnership for the third wicket. This partnership seems to be helping Punjab win many matches.
MI vs PBKS: Who said what?
Hardik Pandya, MI captain
To be honest, I don't have much to say right now. I think we really need to go back to the drawing board and see where we are lacking. Is this a person? Is it as a group? Is this as planned? We'll figure it out and see what we can do next. I think we should give them credit too. The ball started reversing. The dew came in the second innings and it got a little better, but having said that, they outclassed us. They bowled better, they batted better, they certainly fielded better and that tells us that again. No, I think we need to look at whether we need to take some difficult decisions or whether we need to continue and hope that things turn around. These are some tough questions that we ultimately have to answer and, yes, take ownership of.
Shreyas Iyer, PBKS captain
The way we are playing is definitely confident and optimistic. We also have our head on our shoulders. I am happy that today we came out ahead and won. He has definitely raised his level, even when he was scoring runs, he was giving us great starts, this year he has become more mature, match by match he is becoming more mature. My grip. We have a tendency to pull things back, even against SRH, the way we bowled.. We haven't decided about that yet, I've been lucky to win the toss, there are a lot of positive players in the team who go out and express themselves. I personally feel that you need to keep getting better in each game, that's the recipe we keep following. I have seen the crowd coming in large numbers and cheering us.
Arshdeep Singh, Player of the Match
First of all thank you very much. This is related to the conversation with Ricky, I told him that the ball is not coming out of my hand well, after that we talked, yesterday we had a good session and today you can see that the ball is coming out well. It was about keeping myself mentally fresh. He told me that you are coming after winning the World Cup and maintaining that level is not easy. This is the ball I am working on, I have seen Siraj taking a lot of wickets with it. The seam was coming good, changed it a bit and whatever comes your way in T20 cricket, you take it. I mean, use the wide yorkers that I am bowling a lot, use the long boundaries, that's the plan. When the batter is set you go wide and when the batter is new you attack the stumps. Loved the support, a lot of credit for it goes to my social media, a lot of them know me from making reels. You will see a lot of reels coming.
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