By Prakash Nair 
New Chandigarh, April 28: Punjab Kings lost a game. After everything this season. After the 265 chase. After six wins on the trot. After becoming the team that no one in this IPL could figure out how to beat. RR came to Mullanpur tonight and just beat them. Not in a squeaker. Not off the last ball. Six wickets. Four balls to spare. Comfortable, in the end.
Sit with that for a second.
The one team everyone picked to run away with the IPL 2026 title has lost their first match. And they lost it to a side that, three weeks ago, looked like it was quietly falling apart.
Cricket is mad. Genuinely mad.
The Evening Started Normally Enough
Punjab got put in to bat. Not what Shreyas Iyer would have wanted, but fine. This team can bat in any situation, at any stage, against any bowling attack. Everyone knows that by now.
Priyansh Arya lasted about three minutes. Eleven balls, 29 runs, two shots that made people put their phones down, one edge to Jofra Archer, and he was walking back. Classic Arya. You get the fireworks and the early finish together and you have learned to accept that is just the way it goes with him.
Then Prabhsimran Singh and Cooper Connolly came together and did the quiet, important work that tends to get forgotten when the headlines go elsewhere. Fifty-nine runs between them. Punjab finished the powerplay at 65 for 1 and everything was ticking along exactly as expected.
Prabhsimran made 59. His fourth fifty this season. There is a real argument that this man is Punjab’s most consistent batter in 2026 and yet somehow the conversation always ends up being about someone else. Four half-centuries. Shows up every week. Does not get the credit.
Iyer came in and had one of those evenings where nothing really clicks. He made 30. Functional but not the Iyer who finished that 265 chase in Delhi like he had written the result himself. Punjab needed a big finish and their captain was not going to provide it tonight.
Marcus Stoinis had other ideas. Enormous ones.
Marcus Stoinis. Where Did That Come From?
Here is a fact that sounds made up but is completely true. Before tonight, Marcus Stoinis had faced 27 balls across the entire first half of IPL 2026. The whole season. Seven matches. Twenty-seven balls.
Then he came out tonight with about four overs to go and hit 62 runs off 22 balls.
Two sixes off Archer, including one that went back over his head so cleanly that Archer just stood there and watched it land. Then the final over against Brijesh Sharma, which was less of an over and more of an assault. The crowd, which had been sitting with that specific kind of tense quiet that comes when your team is not quite running away with it, just erupted.
Punjab finished on 222 for 4.
Hand on heart, sitting in that ground at that moment, most people thought that was it. Game done. Punjab had done it again. Rajasthan were going to need something extraordinary.
They got Vaibhav Sooryavanshi instead. Which is basically the same thing.
The Kid Just Does Not Care About the Total
Someone needs to explain to Vaibhav Sooryavanshi that chasing 223 in a T20 is supposed to be stressful. Nobody has done it yet, and judging by the way he batted tonight, nobody is going to bother trying.
He opened the batting for Rajasthan, and in the first six overs he hit six sixes and scored 46 runs off 16 balls. The powerplay ended with Rajasthan at 84 for 1. Punjab had scored 65 in their powerplay. The team chasing was nineteen runs ahead of the team that set the target at the six-over mark.
Nobody writes that sentence in a normal cricket match.
Arshdeep finally got him with a full toss that caught the bottom edge and looped to Shreyas Iyer at midwicket. Out for 46. But the thing about Sooryavanshi knocks is that even when he gets out, the damage is already done and cannot be undone. Rajasthan needed about 140 off the last 14 overs with all their best batters still to come. That is a manageable ask. Sooryavanshi turned what should have been a tense chase into something approaching routine.
The Mullanpur crowd, which had been in full voice when Stoinis was smashing sixes an hour earlier, went noticeably quiet.
Chahal Gave Punjab a Way Back In
Right when it looked like Rajasthan were going to cruise it, Punjab’s spinners put the brakes on.
Harpreet Brar bowled four overs and gave away 25 runs. No wickets, but the kind of suffocating, tight bowling that forces batters into bad decisions. He did his job without getting any recognition for it and that is very much a Harpreet Brar kind of night.
Chahal then took over and did what Chahal does when he is feeling it. Got Dhruv Jurel. Got Yashasvi Jaiswal, who had been building into something dangerous, tried to clear long off and found the fielder instead, out for 51. Then got Riyan Parag too, caught for 29.
Three wickets. Rajasthan 151 for 4. Seventy-two runs needed off six overs. Parag back in the dugout. The crowd back on its feet.
Punjab had gone from being dead and buried at the halfway stage of Rajasthan’s innings to being right back in the game. The momentum had completely flipped. This was Punjab’s match to win again.
And then two people who had barely featured in the conversation all night long walked to the crease and took it away from them.
Ferreira and Dubey. Remember Those Names.
Donovan Ferreira is the kind of cricketer who never ends up on the highlight reel but somehow always ends up on the winning side. He does not play one-handed scoops over fine leg. He does not reverse ramp a 140 kph delivery from a world-class fast bowler. He just bats properly, runs hard, picks gaps, and is still there at the end when it matters.
He was there at the end tonight.
Shubham Dubey is the one who really needs the credit though. He was an impact substitute. He had been sitting on that bench all evening, kit on, watching the match swing back and forth, not knowing if he would even get to bat. Then he gets called up with 70-odd needed off six overs and the game completely in the balance.
He hit Arshdeep Singh for 17 runs in the 18th over.
That was the moment. That one over. Punjab needed Arshdeep to be exceptional and he was not. Rajasthan suddenly needed 18 off the last two overs and that is, for a side with two set batters at the crease on this pitch under this dew, practically a formality.
They knocked it off with four balls to go. Ferreira unbeaten. Dubey unbeaten. Both of them walking off that ground with the quiet satisfaction of two people who did their job when it mattered and do not need the fuss.
The exact thing Rajasthan’s middle order has been failing to do for a month. Done. Tonight. Against the best team in the tournament.
What Does Any of This Mean Going Forward
Punjab are fine. Let us be clear about that. They are still top of the table. They are still the best side in this competition across the full run of the season. One defeat does not change what they have built or who they are.
But a few things came out of tonight that are worth thinking about. Arshdeep Singh is their best death bowler and he had a difficult evening at the worst possible moment. The fielding was loose. Not catastrophically loose, but the kind of loose where you let a team get comfortable when you should be squeezing them. In a game this tight, loose fielding is the difference between winning and losing.
For Rajasthan this is enormous. Not just two points. The actual belief that comes from chasing 223 on a rival’s home ground and winning it with something to spare. Their middle order, the thing everyone had been hammering them about, came through tonight. Ferreira and Dubey gave Riyan Parag something he has not had much of in the last month. Evidence that his batting lineup can finish a chase without everything depending on Jaiswal and Sooryavanshi.
Sooryavanshi will wake up tomorrow with all the headlines, as he should. Forty-six off sixteen balls while opening the batting in a 223-run chase at the age of fourteen is not a normal thing to do.
But the win did not come from those sixteen balls. The win came from two blokes in the middle overs who kept calm, ran hard, hit boundaries when boundaries were needed, and finished the job.
Stoinis made 62 off 22 and lost. Sooryavanshi made 46 off 16 and his team won. Cricket hands out these little ironies and walks away without explaining itself.
Punjab Kings lost tonight for the first time this season.
They will be back. But tonight, Rajasthan deserved every bit of this.
Scorecard at a Glance
Punjab Kings
222 / 4, 20 overs
Batting
| Batter | R | B | 4s | 6s | SR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Priyansh Arya | 29 | 11 | 4 | 2 | 263.6 |
| Prabhsimran Singh | 59 | 44 | 6 | 1 | 134.1 |
| Cooper Connolly | 30 | — | — | — | — |
| Shreyas Iyer (c) | 30 | — | — | — | — |
| Marcus Stoinis not out | 62 | 22 | 3 | 5 | 281.8 |
Bowling
| Bowler | O | R | W | Eco |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jofra Archer | 4 | — | 1 | — |
| Yash Raj Punja | — | — | 2 | — |
Rajasthan Royals
223 / 4
19.2 overs · chased 223
Batting
| Batter | R | B | 4s | 6s | SR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vaibhav Sooryavanshi | 46 | 16 | 2 | 6 | 287.5 |
| Yashasvi Jaiswal | 51 | 27 | 7 | 1 | 188.9 |
| Riyan Parag (c) | 29 | — | — | — | — |
| Donovan Ferreira not out | — | — | — | — | — |
| Shubham Dubey not out · impact | — | — | — | — | — |
Bowling
| Bowler | O | R | W | Eco |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yuzvendra Chahal | 4 | — | 3 | — |
| Harpreet Brar | 4 | 25 | 0 | 6.25 |
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- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
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Ananya Sharma