“Punjab Kings will finish in the top two this season. I’ll message you after the 14th match to rerun this podcast.” When Shashank Singh, one of the breakout stars of the franchise from IPL 2024, said this in an assured voice to a show host in March, ahead of the new season, one couldn’t have been blamed for shrugging it off as presumptuous talk. After all, he was placing his bet on a team that has an empty trophy cabinet, and only two semifinal/playoff qualifications to show in its 17-year-old IPL journey, to be a sure-shot contender for the top spots.
Be that as it may, two months after his bold prediction, as Shashank addressed the press conference after the match against the Mumbai Indians on May 25, he seemed prophetic. Thrashing an in-form Mumbai side with a seven-wicket win, the Kings rose to the pole position on the points table and secured a spot in Qualifier-1, just as he foretold.
A cold streak
Known for chopping and changing of squads every auction cycle and appointing new captains — 17 of them in 18 years — the Kings had earned the off-putting tag of perennial underperformers over the years.
The last time they entered the playoffs, they were not even called the Punjab Kings. The red-and-silver brigade of Kings XI Punjab had yet to be rechristened into the new identity.
After finishing in the top four under the leadership of Yuvraj Singh in the inaugural year of the tournament, their best-ever season came in 2014 under the wings of George Bailey. Bossing the league phase and entering the final that year, the Kings fell agonisingly short of reaching the pinnacle as they went down against KKR in the summit clash.
A host of personnel came and went in the ten seasons since, but a playoff qualification, let alone the top two spot, eluded their grasp. Not even seasoned Indian players like R. Ashwin, K.L. Rahul and Shikhar Dhawan, who held the captaincy mantle, and coaches like Mike Hesson, Anil Kumble and Trevor Bayliss couldn’t bring the fortunes to the side, leaving the fans frustrated for a decade.
What changed?
Going into the mega player auction this year, the Kings once again cleared the slate and had the biggest purse to build the squad from scratch, as has become routine at the start of every auction cycle. And when Ricky Ponting, the new coach at the helm, roped in his former Delhi Capitals skipper Shreyas Iyer for ₹26.75 crore, it did raise a few eyebrows.
Shreyas, even though he led KKR to the title last season, has been out of the reckoning from the Indian T20I side and had an IPL career strike rate of 121.8 as of 2024 — a jogging pace for a game that mostly sprints these days. But Ponting was poised. “I really wanted to work with him. He’ll be a great leader for us,” he exuded confidence after winning the bidding war for Iyer. And that trust has made all the difference.
In the 14 games, Shreyas has shown different facets of his game and personality — as an astute tactician who defended 111 against KKR, a consistent and explosive batter who has amassed 514 runs at a much-improved rate of 172, and a selfless team player who gave up his number 3 spot to maximise the potential of Australian wicketkeeper batter Josh Inglis.
Shreyas’s rapport with Ponting has meant that the team has shown great clarity in selection calls right from the beginning, one of the key reasons for the team’s resurgent campaign. A bold and unusual one among them was the move to have two uncapped openers — Prabhsimran Singh and Priyansh Arya — which has paid rich dividends. They have scored 467 runs together, setting the tone of the batting innings in the PowerPlay and beyond.
With the uncapped middle-order duo of Nehal Wadhera and Shashank Singh also firing, the Indian batting core has had a remarkable season. That a player of Marcus Stoinis’ calibre has played only 65 balls in ten matches this season shows that the Kings’ local batters have been able to do much of the heavy lifting.
One other factor that has given the team an edge this season has been their depth in batting. In some of the games, they have had Azamatullah Omarzai, the Afghanistan all-rounder and ODI player of the year in 2024, slotted to bat as low as number 9, thereby allowing the batters to press the accelerator right from the word go. This aggressive philosophy has taken them past 200 seven times – the most by any team while batting first in an IPL season.
In the bowling department, Arshdeep has once again been the pick of the lot, taking 18 scalps at an economy of 8.56. While Marco Jansen, who will be unavailable for the playoffs, has given Arshdeep
ample support, Yuzvendra Chahal has had an inconsistent season and yet turned the tide in at least two matches single-handedly. Xavier Bartlett, Vyshak Vijayakumar and Harpreet Brar have all contributed in patches, and the Kings would want them at their best come the playoffs.
The final push
“Right from day one… we weren’t thinking about the playoffs, we were thinking about winning the championship,” were the words of Shreyas Iyer after the match against the Mumbai Indians. For that dream to come true, the Kings’ first challenge will come in the form of RCB in the Qualifier 1 at New Chandigarh on Thursday (May 29). As Shreyas and his shers gear up for that game, they know that it’s a place in the history books that awaits them; that they are just two steps away from touching a summit that no Punjab has ever been able to reach; and that they have a chance to give their loyal fans, who for years have been cast down by mid-table mediocrity, a chance to feel what it means to see their team lift that coveted trophy.
And even if they don’t, even if the final hurdle comes too steep a challenge, the Kings can be proud of a season where they have finally established their identity with the brand of cricket that they play, and the players that make up the team’s DNA. And who knows if it’s just the beginning of a long and fruitful coach-captain partnership that has just signalled their glory days to come. For now, the Kings have turned their past into prologue — and the story they’re writing might just be a historic one.
Published – May 29, 2025 12:11 am IST