Punjab hammer Lucknow to stay unbeaten, Rinku leads KKR to first victory of the season

Explosive knocks from opener Priyansh Arya and Cooper Connolly helped top of the table Punjab Kings hammer Lucknow Super Giants by 54 runs to stay unbeaten in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026 on Sunday.

Arya struck 93 off 37 balls and fellow left-hander Connolly hit 87 to power Punjab to this season’s highest total of 254-7 after being invited to bat first in Chandigarh.

In reply, Lucknow managed just 200-5 as Punjab consolidated their top spot in the 10-team table with five wins and one no result in six matches.

An early reprieve for Connolly proved costly for Lucknow after skipper Rishabh Pant decided not to review an lbw call in the second over from Mohsin Khan and replays suggested the ball would have hit the stumps.

Australia’s Connolly was on four at the time and put on 182 runs for the second wicket with Arya as the two bludgeoned the opposition attack with sixes.

Arya reached his second fifty of the season in 19 balls and soon the Lucknow attack had no answers for the batting blitz.

Connolly went after Aiden Markram with three straight sixes and Arya finished the over with two more in a 32-run 13th over and Punjab looked at 300.

But pace bowler Prince Yadav took down Connolly and Arya fell three balls later in the next over to miss out on a century.

Mohsin dismissed skipper Shreyas Iyer for five but Australia’s Marcus Stoinis steered the team to a mammoth total with his 16-ball 29.

Mitchell Marsh, who hit 40, and Ayush Badoni (35) handed Lucknow a brisk start and Pant hit 43 but regular wickets and the ever-increasing run rate kept the team behind the chase.

Markram hit a valiant 22-ball 42 and despite a few dropped catches from Punjab fielders Lucknow lost their third straight match.

In another match, Rinku Singh hit an unbeaten 53 to lead Kolkata Knight Riders to their first win of the season as they beat Rajasthan Royals by four wickets in a low-scoring contest.

Rajasthan posted 155-9 as their batting faltered after 15-year-old Vaibhav Sooryavanshi top-scored with 46 at Kolkata’s Eden Gardens.

Kolkata, who had five defeats and one point from a rained-off game coming into the match, slipped to 5-2 and 85-6 before the left-handed Rinku steered the team home with two balls to spare.

Rinku smacked five fours and two sixes in his 34-ball knock and put on an unbeaten 76-run stand with number eight Anukul Roy, who made 29, to steer the team home.

Rinku credited a calm and calculated approach for his match-winning knock, saying his focus was always on taking the game deep.

“Sometimes it happens like that when a few things don’t go your way, so you feel that intensity. But it wasn’t like I was hesitating or unsure about playing my shots. My mindset was to take the game till the end because I had conversations with the coach and also with my batting partner. The idea was to take it deep since the match was in a tricky situation,” he said.

The left-handed Roy kept calm with his senior partner as he hit a six off Jofra Archer in the 19th over and Kolkata needed nine from the final six balls.

Rinku, who was dropped on eight by Nandre Burger, hit two fours and a winning six as he raised his fifty to bring cheer to the dugout and home crowd.

England pace bowler Archer had Tim Seifert bowled for a duck on the first ball of the chase and South Africa’s Burger dismissed skipper Ajinkya Rahane for nought to make it two down.

Kolkata’s big-buy Cameron Green looked fluent in his 27 off 13 balls but fell stumped off Ravi Bishnoi with wicketkeeper Dhruv Jurel making a wide collection and a back flip onto the stumps. Wickets kept tumbling with Ravindra Jadeja claiming two but Rinku made the most of his early reprieve to get three-time champions Kolkata over the line.

Earlier, Rajasthan started strongly with openers Yashasvi Jaiswal, who made 39, and T20 sensation Sooryavanshi, who bounced back from a golden duck in the previous game to hammer six fours and two sixes in his 28-ball knock, putting on 81 for the first wicket. Spinner Varun Chakravarthy took down the left-handed Sooryavanshi and returned figures of 3-14 to trigger a collapse.

Fast bowler Kartik Tyagi took three key wickets and Sunil Narine claimed 2-26.

Agencies