The Punjab Kings continued their march in IPL 2026 as they defeated the Mumbai Indians by seven wickets on Thursday, April 16, at the Wankhede Stadium.
Shreyas Iyer won an important toss and opted to bowl first. Ryan Rickelton and Suryakumar Yadav were dismissed in the third over off consecutive balls by Arshdeep Singh. However, Quinton de Kock and Naman Dhir helped them recover with a solid 122-run partnership off 68 balls.
Quinton de Kock went on to score a majestic century on his comeback in a Mumbai Indians’ jersey. Dhir, meanwhile, slammed 50 off 31 balls. Hardik Pandya and Tilak Varma played handy little cameos as the hosts finished on 195/6.
In reply, Priyansh Arya scored a quickfire 15 off nine balls before being dismissed. Cooper Connolly also failed to capitalise on a good start. However, Shreyas joined forces with Prabhsimram Singh and stitched a match-winning 139-run stand off 66 balls.
After Shreyas was dismissed for a 35-ball 66, Prabhsimran took the team home with an unbeaten 80 (39) alongside Marcus Stoinis (10*). AM Ghazanfar took two wickets but didn’t have much support from his fellow bowlers. PBKS romped home in 16.3 overs, with seven wickets to spare.
Talking Points
1. Quinton de Kock excels in his comeback match for MI
Quinton de Kock, playing his first match of the season, smashed a belligerent century against a potent Punjab Kings’ bowling. The southpaw carried his bat, remaining unbeaten on 112 off 60 balls. He belted eight fours and seven sixes, finishing with a strike rate of 186.67. De Kock’s form would be one of the rare silver linings from this game for Mumbai.
2. Arshdeep Singh returns to form
Arshdeep Singh had only picked up two wickets in the first four games in IPL 2026. However, on Thursday, he breathed fire, bagging two crucial wickets inside the power play. Towards the end, he came back to dismiss the dangerous Sherfane Rutherford. In the end, the left-arm speedster finished with stunning figures of 3/22 in four overs in a high-scoring clash.
3. Prabhsimran Singh, Shreyas Iyer continue their purple patch
The top four batters for PBKS have been excellent so far. Prabhsimran Singh smashed 80 off 39 balls, belting 11 fours and two sixes. He batted with a strike rate of 205.13. On the other hand, it was great to see Shreyas guiding him along the way with his experience during a match-winning stand for the third wicket. This partnership looks set to win Punjab several matches.
Video of the Day: Shreyas’ acrobatic effort stuns MI dugout
MI vs PBKS: Who Said What?
Hardik Pandya, MI captain
To be very honest, I don’t have much to say right now. I think we really need to go back on the drawing board and see where are we lacking. Is it individuals? Is it as a group? Is it as planning? We’ll just figure it out and see what we can do next. I think we need to give credit to them as well. The ball started reversing. In the second inning the dew came and it slightly got better but having said that, they just outbeat us. They bowled better, they batted better, they fielded better definitely and that talks to us again. No, I think we need to see, do we need to make some difficult calls or do we need to keep continuing and hope that we’ll turn things around. These are some harsh questions which eventually we need to answer and yeah, ownership has to be taken.
Shreyas Iyer, PBKS captain
Certainly confident and optimistic the way we have been playing. Also we have our heads on our shoulder. I am glad that today we came out and got that victory. He has certainly raised up his bar, even though he was getting runs, he was giving us excellent starts, this year he has been more mature, match by match he is getting more mature. My catch. We have this tendancy of pulling things back, even against SRH, the way we bowled.. We haven’t decided about that as of now, I have been luck to win the toss, lot of positive players in the team to go out and express themselves. I personally feel you need to keep getting better each and every game, that is the reciepe we keep following. I have seen the crowd coming in numbers and cheering us.
Arshdeep Singh, Player of the Match
First of all thank you so much. It goes back to having a chat with Ricky, I told him that the ball is not coming out of my hand nicely, we had a chat after that, yesterday we had a good session and today you could see the ball coming out nicely. It was about keeping myself mentally fresh. He told me you are coming on the back of a World Cup win and it is not easy to keep up that level. That’s the ball I have been working on, I saw Siraj getting a lot of wickets with it. The seam was coming nice, changed it a bit and in T20 cricket whatever comes your way, you take it. I mean the wide yorkers I have been bowling a lot, make use of the longer boundary, that’s the plan. When the batter is set you go wide and the batter is new you attack the stumps. Loved the support, lot of credit goes to my social media, lot of them know me by making reels. You will see a lot of reels coming.
