The top half of the IPL 2026 points table is an utter logjam.Punjab Kings (PBKS), unbeaten through their first seven games, have now lost two in a row. And the team that beat them on Sunday night, Gujarat Titans (GT) have won three in a row. All around the IPL, teams that had led secure lives in the top four have endured setbacks over the last few days.
And so the big squeeze. PBKS remain at No. 1, but they’re only one point above GT at No. 5.
GT, however, are the only team in the top five with a negative net run rate (NRR). This may have something to do with their style of play: they rely on their bowlers to ensure their batters don’t have to score at the frenetic rates of some other teams, but that means their margins of victory tend to be less emphatic.
On Sunday, their margin was wafer-thin – one ball remaining – despite the fact that they dominated virtually from start to finish. Their Test-match pace trio of Mohammed Siraj, Kagiso Rabada amd Jason Holder bowled hard lengths on a pitch that offered steep bounce and plentiful seam movement from those lengths, and reduced PBKS to 47 for 5. Suryansh Shedge and Marcus Stoinis ensured that PBKS recovered to post 163 for 9, but this was still very much a GT kind of target, perfect for their style of top-order play.
A measured half-century from B Sai Sudarsan laid the perfect platform, but GT’s scoring rate remained somewhere in the region of their original required rate right through their chase. And suddenly, they ended up needing 11 off the final over. Washington Sundar sealed victory with a penultimate-ball six, but on another day, this could have so easily been the story of GT sleepwalking to defeat.
But the major story was this: for the third match in a row, GT pulled off the trademark GT victory. Straightjacketing their oppositions with the ball, and chasing down sub-170 targets with significant contributions from one or two of their top three.