After an indifferent start to his IPL 2026 season, Punjab Kings pacer Arshdeep Singh swung back to his best during a thumping seven-wicket win over the Mumbai Indians on Thursday night. Opening the attack at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, the left-arm seamer notched up a milestone 100th wicket with his first strike that removed MI opener Ryan Rickelton caught down at square leg. It was a wobble delivery that swung back into the left-hander before Arshdeep startled his India captain Suryakumar Yadav with a first-ball dismissal, a beautiful outswinger that clipped the outside edge down to short third. Arshdeep eventually walked away with figures of three for 22 in four overs. Arshdeep had gone wicket-less for four matches, starting with the T20 World Cup final against New Zealand last month, before finding two scalps in the previous match, but leaked 50 runs. After returning to his best version with movement and toe-crushing yorkers in Mumbai, Arshdeep revealed how his love for Instagram reels and a neat chat with head coach Ricky Ponting worked in his favour. ALSO READ | ‘Shreyas Iyer is the new chase master’: Former India opener compares PBKS captain’s batting to Virat Kohli Lot more reels your way’ “I love the support and a lot of credit goes to my social media,” said Arshdeep in the post-match presentation on Thursday night. “I love making reels and I love posting on social media. So a lot of them know me [for] reels. I love it and I’ll keep doing that for them. You’ll see a lot of reels coming.” The two-time T20 World Cup winner admitted that he had confessed to his head coach Ponting that his bowling form had dipped considerably since the most recent title win in March.Story continues below this ad “It feels good and it goes back to having a chat with Ricky after one of the training sessions. I told him I wasn’t feeling the way I should feel, the ball is not coming out of my hand really well and [I] had a nice pep talk with him,” explained Arshdeep. “How I can keep myself fresh mentally and how I was just expecting too much out of myself and not letting things to be simple and just going by the flow.” “I told him the ball didn’t feel right when it left the hand. The chat was nothing technical, but he told me I was expecting too much from myself, coming off from a high of the World Cup win, and said you can’t maintain that all the time,” Arshdeep explained, pointing out that finding that rhythm for early wickets was as much a mental battle as a technical one. And who would know more about winning World Cups than Ricky Ponting? Punjab are currently coasting at the top of the table, and remains the only unbeaten side in the IPL 2026 season with four wins and a washed out match across five games.
How Instagram reels and a Ricky Ponting pep talk helped Arshdeep Singh rediscover form in IPL 2026
