By Prakash Nair 
New Chandigarh, March 31: Nobody really saw Cooper Connolly coming. Not like this, anyway.
Sure, Ricky Ponting had talked him up before the season. Said the young Australian gave Punjab Kings flexibility, mentioned the left-hand-right-hand thing, the batting order options. Standard pre-season coach talk. You hear it every year. But what unfolded at the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium in Mullanpur on Tuesday night was something else entirely. A 22-year-old playing his first-ever IPL game, walking in at number two with the chase still very much alive, and then somehow against all the chaos swirling around him, holding the whole thing together.
Punjab Kings beat the Gujarat Titans by 3 wickets. The target was 163. It should not have been as difficult as it became. But cricket has a way of making simple things complicated, and by the time PBKS were sitting at 118 for 6 in the 15th over, the crowd at Mullanpur had gone very quiet indeed.
Connolly did not flinch. That is the only way to describe it.
How the Gujarat Titans Set The Target
Shreyas Iyer won the toss and put GT in. Sensible decision on a pitch that the groundstaff had clearly used before, one that was always going to get slower as the night wore on. Dew factored in too, though not as heavily as some had feared.
Shubman Gill and Sai Sudharsan opened. Of course they did. These two were practically inseparable in IPL 2025, putting together 912 runs as a pair across the season. Sudharsan won the Orange Cap with 759 runs. Gill finished with 650. Between them, they carried Gujarat to the playoffs almost single-handedly. Coming into tonight, you expected more of the same.
What you got instead was Sudharsan gone for 13 off 11 balls, caught at slip off Marco Jansen, and suddenly the pressure was entirely on Gill. He handled it reasonably well, actually. Got to 39 off 27 balls, looked increasingly fluent, was beginning to play the kind of shots that remind you why he is considered one of the best T20 batters in the country right now.
And then Yuzvendra Chahal came on.
This has become something of a recurring nightmare for Gill. The legspinner has now dismissed him four times in IPL head-to-heads. Four times. Gill averages fine against most spinners. Against Chahal, he strikes at 122 and has been dismissed repeatedly by the same variations, the same invitations to go big, the same traps. On Tuesday, it was a slog sweep over mid-wicket that did not come off the bat the way Gill wanted. It ballooned. Cooper Connolly, of all people, is jogging in from the deep and taking it cleanly. Out for 39. GT were 84 for 2 at the 10-over mark, and momentum had very visibly shifted.
Jos Buttler and Glenn Phillips did what they could. Buttler looked scratchy, as he has for a while now, truth be told. The England veteran is a different player when he is in nick, but that fluency has not been consistent this past year. He made 38 off 33, which is fine, but not the innings GT needed from their finisher. Phillips was more aggressive, smashing 25 off 17 with one enormous six off Vyshak, but just when it felt like the pair might push GT toward 180, Vyshak pulled one back into the pitch, and Phillips chipped it straight to long-off. Simple catch for Jansen.
After that, it was damage limitation. Washington Sundar made 18. Rahul Tewatia was not out for 11. Shahrukh Khan contributed 4 before Vyshak cleaned up the tail with the kind of ruthless efficiency PBKS have become known for.
GT finished at 162 for 6. Defendable. Not formidable.
Vyshak was exceptional, finishing with 3 for 34. Chahal took 2 for 28. Jansen conceded only 26 runs in his four overs and picked up the early Sudharsan wicket that set the tone. PBKS bowled with discipline and purpose. They deserved to be chasing a sub-165 total.
The Chase That Nearly Was Not
The first two overs of the chase told you this was not going to be straightforward. Priyansh Arya, playing as an impact sub at the top, lasted exactly 1.2 overs before Kagiso Rabada hit the top of off stump and sent him back for 7. Just like that. PBKS were 7 for 1 and Connolly was walking to the crease.
What followed, for about eight overs, was genuinely good T20 batting. Connolly and Prabhsimran Singh put on a stand that not only steadied the innings but actually started to take the game away from Gujarat. Prabhsimran was brilliant, attacking Washington Sundar through the offside, pulling anything short with confidence. Connolly matched him blow for blow. Four sixes between them. Boundaries all around the ground. PBKS ended the powerplay at 55 for 1, a run ahead of where GT had been at the same stage.
At that point, this felt like a comfortable chase. 108 needed off 14 overs with nine wickets in hand. Plenty of batting to come. Ponting, watching from the dugout, probably allowed himself a quiet exhale.
Then Rashid Khan got Prabhsimran. It was a beauty of a dismissal in the end. Prabhsimran had been attacking Sundar, so he came down the track to Rashid, expecting something similar. Rashid is not Sundar. The ball dipped, Prabhsimran missed, and the stumps were rattled. 83 for 2. Fine. Still fine.
Except it was not fine for long.
Prasidh Krishna came on as the impact substitute in the 13th over, and what he did over the next three overs should be studied by anyone who wants to understand what momentum in T20 cricket actually means. First ball, he got Shreyas Iyer, who flicked a half-volley straight to Washington Sundar at deep backward square leg. Gone for 18. In the next over, Sundar himself removed Nehal Wadhera for a scratchy 3. Then, in the 15th over, Prasidh came back and got Shashank Singh via a nick to the keeper, and then on the very same over had Marcus Stoinis caught at deep third man trying to cut a ball he should have left alone.
118 for 6. From 110 for 2 in the 12th over to 118 for 6 in the 15th. Six wickets for 8 runs across that stretch. The kind of collapse that wins matches for the team doing the bowling.
GT was roaring. The dew that had been building on the ground was making it harder to grip the ball, but suddenly it did not matter. Prasidh had three wickets and was in the kind of zone where batters simply do not feel comfortable. Mullanpur was genuinely buzzing.
Connolly, Alone
Through all of this, Cooper Connolly was still there.
He had watched wickets fall at both ends. He had seen his captain dismissed cheaply, his middle order disintegrate, his lower order vanish in the space of nine deliveries. And he had not budged. Fifty-four runs, 36 balls, three fours and four sixes, a strike rate of 150. A debut innings, in a pressure chase, on a slowing pitch, with half his team back in the dressing room.
He brought up his fifty in the 16th over, pulling Rabada over wide long-on for a six to get there. It was not a fluke. It was not adrenaline. It was composed, calculating batting from someone who understood exactly what the moment required. When to attack, when to rotate, when to breathe.
Marco Jansen gave him company for a while before debutant Ashok Sharma, who was genuinely impressive with the ball all evening, sharp and difficult to get away, cleaned him up with a slower back-of-hand delivery. 144 for 7. Nineteen runs needed off 14 balls. This still could have gone either way.
It did not. PBKS held on. They found the runs, somehow. Punjab Kings won by 3 wickets, and the home crowd, which had briefly gone silent during the collapse, found its voice again.
What This All Actually Means
For Gujarat, the performance was not without merit. They restricted PBKS’s big hitters, got Connolly’s lower-order partners out cheaply, and Prasidh Krishna was nothing short of sensational. But 162 on this surface, against this batting lineup, was probably 15 runs short. Gill failing against Chahal again is a problem that is starting to look structural rather than accidental. And Buttler being used in the middle order and scoring 38 at a strike rate of 115 when you need him near 160 is a conversation GT’s coaching staff will want to have sooner rather than later.
For Punjab Kings, this was as encouraging as it was messy. They nearly threw away a match they had controlled for large parts of the evening. The middle order collapsed in a manner that will concern Ponting, and the fact that a debutant had to win the game for them is as much a warning as it is a celebration.
But they won. And they won because they have the kind of talent that finds ways, even when the plan falls apart. Connolly’s debut will be a story that gets told for years. The kid from Western Australia, first IPL game, 54 not out in a chase that looked dead, driving Punjab Kings to the perfect start to their 2026 title campaign.
That is not nothing. That is quite something, actually.
Result: Punjab Kings beat Gujarat Titans by 3 wickets. GT: 162/6 (20 overs) | PBKS: 163/7 (won). Venue: Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium, Mullanpur, New Chandigarh. Player of the Match: Cooper Connolly, 54* (36)
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- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
