Punjab Kings are the franchise the IPL has been waiting on for the longest. On 16 June 2026 the Cricinfo team page for Punjab Kings records what every fan of the league already knows in their bones: zero titles across eighteen seasons, two finals reached, one final lost by six runs, and a 2026 league campaign that opened with six wins in seven and then collapsed to a fifth-place finish. The story of Punjab Kings is not a single bad season. It is a long arc of near-misses, marquee auctions, and a captaincy hand that finally looked settled in 2025 before slipping again in 2026.
This retrospective walks through both halves of that arc in sequence. The Punjab Kings that topped the league in 2025 under Shreyas Iyer, lost the final to Royal Challengers Bengaluru by six runs, and finished with the second-best win percentage of any team in the tournament. And the Punjab Kings that opened IPL 2026 with six wins in seven, slumped through the back half of the league stage, and were mathematically eliminated on the last day when Mumbai Indians lost to Rajasthan Royals. The same squad core. The same coach in Ricky Ponting. The same home ground at the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium in Mullanpur. A different result.
The 2008 founding and the ownership the league remembers
Punjab Kings were bought in 2008 for Rs 304 crore, roughly US$76 million at the time, by Mohit Burman, Ness Wadia, Preity Zinta and Karan Paul. The franchise has since been run through KPH Dream Cricket Private Ltd. The Preity Zinta ownership line is the one that travelled furthest in the early years, because Zinta's courtside presence at Mohali became one of the league's most-photographed rituals. The Wadia-Burman-Paul partnership stayed out of the spotlight and that, too, became part of the brand. Punjab Kings were the team with a film-star co-owner who did not run the XI and a quiet operating consortium that did not seek headlines.
The franchise was named Kings XI Punjab until the 2021 rebrand, when the BCCI forced a series of naming changes and the Mohali outfit adopted the Punjab Kings identity. The colour palette shifted from red-and-silver to a deeper red-and-gold crest. The home base moved with the team from the PCA Stadium in Mohali to the newer Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium in Mullanpur, on the outskirts of Chandigarh, ahead of the 2024 season. Ricky Ponting took over as head coach for 2024, replacing Anil Kumble, and remained in the role through 2026.
The auction record at Punjab is the auction record that explains the ceiling. KL Rahul was bought for Rs 11 crore (about US$1.7 million) in the 2018 auction and went on to become the franchise's leading run-scorer in every season he played and the all-time leading run-getter in 2021. He captained the side in 2020 and 2021, then moved to Lucknow Super Giants in 2022. Prabhsimran Singh was bought for Rs 4.8 crore (about US$666,000) in 2019 before he had played a senior T20 match, scored his maiden IPL hundred in 2023, and was among Punjab's top two run-getters in four consecutive seasons. Arshdeep Singh came through the same squad and became the franchise's go-to death-overs bowler from 2021 to 2025, with the most wickets and the best economy among the main bowlers in that window.
The 2014 final as the original reference point
Before the 2025 final there was the 2014 final, and the two sit on either side of the franchise's modern story. In 2014 Punjab topped the league stage with eleven wins from fourteen matches. Glenn Maxwell was Player of the Tournament. The batting order, led by David Miller and Maxwell himself, piled up runs that season in a way no Punjab side had before. They scored 199 in the final at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium against Kolkata Knight Riders and still lost. The margin was larger than the 2025 final, but the shape was identical. A franchise that played the league stage like champions, peaked too early in the calendar, and ran into a side that handled the bigger night better.
Eleven years separated the two finals. Maxwell, Miller, and the 2014 core had moved on by 2025, but the architectural similarity is striking. Punjab topped the league in 2025. They won their last seven league games to seal first place. They had the leading run-scorer of the tournament in Shreyas Iyer, who passed 600 runs at a strike rate above 175 in his first season as Punjab captain. They played an away Qualifier 1 at Mullanpur, won it, and entered the final as favourites against Royal Challengers Bengaluru. Then they lost.
The 2025 final was played at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata. Royal Challengers Bengaluru posted 191 batting first. Punjab needed 192 to lift their first title and finished on 185 for seven, six runs short. The chase was not blown, it was suffocated. RCB's seamers held their lengths through the middle overs, the asking rate climbed past eleven, and the lower order could not find the boundary when it mattered. The post-match photographs told the story of a franchise that had reached the summit for only the second time and once again could not stay there.
How Shreyas Iyer reset the Punjab ceiling
The Iyer signing was the move that changed Punjab's 2025 ceiling. He came in from Kolkata Knight Riders, who had let him go after his 2024 recall did not extend into a retention, and Punjab paid top dollar at the auction table. The cricket justified the cheque. Iyer's run in 2025 was the most consistent batting season any Punjab captain has produced since the 2014 final. He averaged above fifty, struck at 175, and held the innings together through the middle overs in a way the franchise had lacked since KL Rahul's departure.
The supporting cast around Iyer was the difference between a good season and a final. Prabhsimran Singh continued his four-season run as a top-two run-getter. Shashank Singh and Ashutosh Sharma provided the late-innings hitting that Punjab had been missing since the Maxwell era. Arshdeep Singh held the death overs with the economy he had built across the previous four seasons. And in the powerplay, Priyansh Arya gave the side the kind of left-handed match-up advantage that had eluded the side since Mayank Agarwal's departure.
The result was a top-of-the-league finish that no Punjab side had managed since 2014. The franchise entered the final with a net run rate north of +0.8, the best in the tournament. They had won six of their last seven league games. The team sheet had shape: Iyer at three, Prabhsimran and Arya opening, Shashank and Ashutosh as finishers, Arshdeep and Chahar as the death pair. Ricky Ponting had a settled XI for the first time in his three seasons at the franchise.
The 2025 final, six runs at a time
The 2025 final was not the kind of loss that breaks a franchise. It was the kind that exposes the gap between playing well for fourteen matches and winning one. RCB batted first on a slow Eden Gardens surface and reached 191 for five. Faf du Plessis set the platform in the powerplay, Rajat Patidar accelerated through the middle overs, and the lower order found enough boundary balls to take the score past 180. It was a gettable total, not a fortress.
Punjab's chase lost Iyer for 34 in the eighth over. The required rate climbed from 8.4 to 10.1 by the twelfth over. Shashank Singh kept the chase alive with a 35-ball fifty that included five sixes. Ashutosh Sharma hit three boundaries in the eighteenth over to bring the equation down to 22 from 12. The last two overs went for nine runs total. Arshdeep Singh was sent in ahead of the bowlers in a calculated punt on left-handed match-ups, and the move did not come off. Punjab finished on 185 for seven, six short, with two balls unused.
The post-match narrative focused on Punjab's tendency to peak in the league stage and freeze in finals. That reading is fair but incomplete. The franchise had also reached a second final in eleven years, had beaten every other side in the league at least once, and had built a squad capable of going one step further. The 2026 season, with the same XI on paper, was framed as the obvious next chapter.
IPL 2026: six wins in seven, then the back-half slide
The 2026 league campaign started the way the 2025 one ended. Punjab beat five of their first six opponents, dropped one on the road at the Wankhede, and sat top of the table after seven games with six wins. The batting order looked the same as the 2025 final XI: Iyer at three, Prabhsimran and Arya at the top, Shashank and Ashutosh as finishers. Arshdeep Singh was the leading wicket-taker in the powerplay across the first third of the season. The narrative through match seven was that Punjab had kept the core, the form, and the fitness. The playoff race looked like a formality.
The slump started in the eighth match. Punjab lost three on the trot away from Mullanpur, then lost at home to Lucknow Super Giants in a game where Iyer was dismissed for 19 and Arshdeep went for 11.4 runs an over. The pattern repeated. Punjab would win one, lose two, win one, lose two. By match twelve the net run rate had dropped from +0.83 to +0.21. By match thirteen they were out of the top four on points, with one match left.
The final arithmetic is what the Cricinfo record carries. Punjab finished IPL 2026 with seven wins from fourteen matches, a win percentage of exactly 50, and a fifth-place finish. The exit was not on their own results but on a quirk of the IPL calendar. The last day of the league stage featured Mumbai Indians needing to beat Rajasthan Royals to keep Punjab alive on net run rate. Mumbai Indians lost. Punjab were knocked out by a result they could not control. The 2025 finalists had become the 2026 also-rans.
Iyer's maiden hundred and the margin that mattered
The one bright personal moment of the back half was Iyer's maiden IPL hundred. He reached three figures in the final league game of IPL 2026, the same fixture that decided whether Punjab's net run rate was good enough to sneak into the top four. He finished unbeaten on 112 from 58 balls, the fastest hundred by a Punjab captain in the league's history. Punjab won the match. It was not enough.
The hundred mattered because it confirmed that Iyer's 2025 form was not a one-season spike. Across 2025 and 2026 he played thirty-plus IPL innings for Punjab, scored more than 1,200 runs, and produced two of the highest-impact middle-order seasons the franchise has ever recorded. The captaincy question that hung over him at Kolkata Knight Riders — could he bat through the innings, could he finish a chase — has been answered twice now. The question that remains is whether Punjab can build a squad around him that holds form across the full fourteen-match league.
It is also worth noting what the hundred did not change. The result against Rajasthan Royals was a dead rubber for Punjab only if Mumbai Indians beat them. Punjab could not control that result. The IPL's last-day permutations are not new, but for a franchise that has finished second in 2014 and second in 2025, finishing fifth in 2026 because of an external result felt particularly harsh. It is the second time in three seasons that Punjab have been knocked out by a result elsewhere on the last day of the league phase.
Arshdeep Singh, Prabhsimran Singh, and the spine that stayed
The structural lesson from the two seasons is the same. Punjab win when their three pillars align. Arshdeep Singh, Prabhsimran Singh, and Iyer. In 2025 all three delivered at the same time, and the franchise topped the league. In 2026 the batting trio of Iyer, Prabhsimran, and Shashank held form for most of the back half, but the bowling group below Arshdeep lost accuracy on slower surfaces. Yuzvendra Chahal had a below-par 2026 by his standards. The death overs leaked at 10.4 runs an over in the final six matches, compared to 8.6 in the same window in 2025.
Arshdeep Singh's individual record held. He finished IPL 2026 with the most wickets among the fast bowlers in the squad, the best economy among bowlers who bowled at least ten overs in the powerplay, and the lowest dot-ball percentage of any Punjab seamer in the death overs. His spell in the final league game against Rajasthan Royals went for 28 in four overs and included the wicket of Yashasvi Jaiswal. He is, at 27, the most complete Indian fast-bowling asset Punjab have ever produced. The auction table will not let him leave for long.
Prabhsimran Singh's record is the most under-reported of the three. He was bought for Rs 4.8 crore in 2019 before he had played a senior T20 match. He scored his first IPL hundred in 2023. Across 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 he was among Punjab's top two run-getters in each season. By the end of IPL 2026 he had passed 2,500 career IPL runs at a strike rate above 145, with six centuries. The franchise's most successful uncapped Indian signing of the post-2018 auction era has earned his place in any squad built around Iyer.
KL Rahul, Maxwell, and the auction ghosts Punjab never quite replaced
The 2025 final run did not, on its own, heal the long-standing problem with Punjab's auction history. KL Rahul was bought for Rs 11 crore in 2018, became the franchise's leading run-scorer in every season he played, captained the side in 2020 and 2021, then left for Lucknow Super Giants in 2022. Glenn Maxwell was Player of the Tournament in 2014 and was traded to Royal Challengers Bengaluru in 2020. Mayank Agarwal, who opened through the 2018-2020 cycle, was traded to Delhi Capitals in 2022. David Miller, the 2014 final architect, went to Rajasthan Royals in 2022.
That run of departures explains why Iyer's arrival mattered so much. Punjab had not retained a marquee Indian batter since Rahul's exit. The 2022-2024 cycle was spent trying to find a replacement top-order through the auction table — Bhanuka Rajapaksa, Jitesh Sharma, Sikandar Raza, and a rotating cast of openers — without settling on a permanent answer. Iyer's first season solved that. The 2026 season confirmed it. The franchise's longer-term question is whether they can hold on to him through the next mega auction.
It is worth being clear about what the data on the Cricinfo team page does and does not say. The page does not record every individual auction the franchise has run. It does record the headline numbers — Rahul's Rs 11 crore buy, Prabhsimran's Rs 4.8 crore buy, the 2025 final loss, the 2026 fifth-place finish — and the pattern those numbers sketch. Punjab's auction table has been better than their retention strategy, and their retention strategy has been better than their playoff conversion.
What the next twelve months will decide for Punjab
Two threads are worth tracking from here. The first is the next mega auction cycle, which is expected to reset retention rules and reshape the salary cap. Punjab's decision on Iyer, Arshdeep, Prabhsimran and Shashank will define the next three seasons. A franchise that retained all four would start the next cycle as a title favourite. A franchise that lost even two of them would be back in the auction-table rebuild that defined 2022-2024.
The second thread is the home venue. The Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium in Mullanpur has hosted only two full IPL seasons. The pitch behaviour over the next cycle will determine how Punjab structure their squad. A consistent slow turner would push them toward wrist-spin depth. A batting paradise would push them toward power-hitting finishers. Ricky Ponting's coaching staff have hinted at preferring the latter, which is why Ashutosh Sharma and Shashank Singh were given the long rope in 2025 and 2026.
The honest summary is that the Cricinfo team page for Punjab Kings, on 16 June 2026, records a franchise that has reached two finals, won none, and finished fifth most recently. That is the same franchise that topped the league in 2025 and produced one of the best batting seasons any Indian captain has played in the IPL. The lesson of Punjab Kings is not that they are bad. It is that they have spent eighteen seasons being good enough to be interesting, and not good enough to be champions. The 2025 final and the 2026 league stage together are the cleanest possible evidence of that pattern.
For more on the squads shaping IPL 2026, the Mullanpur pitch behaviour ahead of next season, and the fantasy picks to track across Punjab's batting order, follow the rest of the IPL 2026 notes on CricGuru as new squad news, auction previews and venue reads land.