"Not Many Cricketers Can Boast Of This" — How Shreyas Iyer Is Making the Impossible Look Routine for Punjab Kings

Punjab Kings beat Sunrisers Hyderabad by six wickets in the highest-scoring match of IPL 2026 so far — and at the centre of the chase, as always, was a man doing something rare that most people have still not fully noticed.

The Powerplay Carnage That Set the Story Up

First, SRH’s powerplay. Because what happened in the first six overs at the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh Stadium in New Chandigarh on Saturday afternoon needs to be properly recorded.

Abhishek Sharma and Travis Head — the most feared powerplay pair in IPL 2026 — opened together against a Punjab Kings attack that included Arshdeep Singh, Xavier Bartlett and the dangerous Shashank Singh. What followed was carnage.

Abhishek hit 74 off 28 balls — eight sixes, five fours, a strike rate of 264.28 — and brought up his half-century in just 18 balls. Head hit 38 off 23 at the other end. Together, their opening stand was 120 runs off 44 balls — SRH had raced to 105/0 inside the powerplay, one of the most explosive six-over bursts in IPL history.

Abhishek completed 500 fours in T20 cricket during this innings. The PBKS bowlers looked shell-shocked. Arshdeep conceded 50 runs in his four overs.

Then Shashank Singh dismissed both openers in quick succession — Abhishek for 74, Head for 38 — and the SRH innings, briefly threatening 240-plus, settled at 219/6 off 20 overs.

The Unflappable Chase: Arya, Prabhsimran, Then Iyer

For PBKS to win, they needed to do what no team had ever been expected to do against an SRH attack at Mullanpur.

They simply decided to go harder.

Priyansh Arya — 57 off 20 balls, five fours and five sixes — broke Virender Sehwag’s record for the fastest fifty by a PBKS batter in the competition’s history. His strike rate of 285 in the powerplay overs gave PBKS an even more explosive start than SRH had managed.

Prabhsimran Singh added 51 off 25 balls, and when SRH’s young debutant Shivang Kumar (3/33) dismissed both openers and then Cooper Connolly in the middle overs, PBKS were wobbling at around 100/3.

That was when Shreyas Iyer walked in. And here is where Ashwin’s praise starts to make complete sense.

The “Unflappable” Quality Most Batters Do Not Possess

R Ashwin, in a post on X that followed the match, went beyond highlighting Iyer’s 69 not out (33 balls, five fours, five sixes). He identified what separates Iyer from almost every other modern T20 batter.

“At the moment, Shreyas Iyer looks unflappable. His ability to forecast a chase, guide his partner, staying unruffled amidst pressure and shot selection against a bowler he fancies at the right moment are attributes that not many cricketers can boast of at this point in time.”

“We have a plethora of batters who can excite with their shot-making ability but not many like Shreyas. Top Class.”

The specific reference to “forecasting a chase” is worth unpacking. When Iyer arrived, PBKS still needed around 115 runs off 10 overs — with three wickets down and SRH’s bowling unit fresh and hostile. Rather than attempting to go at 14 an over immediately, Iyer spent two overs assessing the field placements and the bowling changes, rotating strike and keeping Nehal Wadhera on the better ball.

Then, over by over, he accelerated — identifying which bowlers to target, when to play along the ground and when to clear the boundary. His final 20 balls produced 52 runs. He finished it alongside Shashank Singh with 1.1 overs to spare.

A Record That Defines Their Identity

Punjab Kings finished on 223/4 in 18.5 overs — PBKS’s second-highest successful chase in IPL history, behind their 262 against KKR in 2024. With this result, PBKS became the first IPL team to successfully chase 200-plus totals ten times.

No other franchise had reached that milestone before Saturday night.

Their record in chasing this season underlined a squad-wide philosophy that PBKS have been building for two years under head coach Ricky Ponting. Iyer’s three words for this culture, as he revealed earlier in the season, were “fearless,” “free” and “clinical.”

IPL 2026 Table After Match 17

Punjab Kings now sit second — unbeaten, three wins from four, having chased 165, 210 and now 220 in their completed matches. Whether it is the second week of April or the final of the tournament, Shreyas Iyer appears to be the player least likely to blink.