Gujarat Titans 167 for 6 (Sai Sudharsan 57, Washington 40*, Arshdeep 2-24, Vyshak 2-31) beat Punjab Kings 163 for 9 (Shedge 57, Stoinis 40, Holder 4-24, Rabada 2-22) by four wickets

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 and 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 Sudharsan 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.

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Siraj and Rabada dominate the powerplay

This was a black-soil pitch with a healthy covering of grass, and it was evident from ball one that it would reward bowlers who hammered away on hard lengths. Ball one from Siraj almost produced a chance, with extra bounce leading to a miscued pull from Priyansh Arya that fell just out of reach of Jos Buttler, who had chased from his spot behind the stumps to the edge of the 30-yard circle at backward square leg. Ball two produced the first wicket: a bit of width for Arya to free his arms, but extra bounce once more to take away his control and bring about a slice to deep third.

Siraj struck again with his next ball, going slightly fuller, getting a bit of swing into the left-handed Cooper Connolly to produce an inside-edge to the wicketkeeper.

Rabada matched Siraj's excellence from the other end, as the two bowled three overs each in the powerplay, beating the bat multiple times as Prabhsimran Singh and Shreyas Iyer struggled to match their usual rates of scoring. Then, Rabada bowled an outstanding sixth over, which included the wicket of Prabhsimran with a 152kph length ball that cramped him for room on the on-the-up punch, and four straight dots to Nehal Wadhera, including one that zipped past the edge and a bouncer that zipped past the helmet. A wicket maiden completed PBKS' least productive powerplay since the start of IPL 2025: 35 for 3.

Holder joins the party

There's no better resource on a trampoline pitch than a towering fast bowler. Holder is four inches taller than the 6'3" Rabada, and he immediately got in the act in the seventh over, finding Wadhera's edge with a hard-length ball slanted across him. And when he nipped a back-of-a-length ball back into Shreyas and bowled him off the inside edge in the ninth over, PBKS were five down and in all kinds of strife.

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Shedge takes down Suthar

In GT's previous game against Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), the left-arm spinner Manav Suthar didn't bowl a ball. Given the help the quicks were getting on Sunday, GT may have felt inclined to repeat this, but a wayward 13th over from the left-arm seamer Arshad Khan, which went for 16, may have prompted them to bring on Suthar for the 14th.

And Suthar bowled one of the more forgettable overs of the season. Bowlers often get taken to the cleaners in the IPL even when they bowl reasonably good balls, but this was just an old-fashioned bad over: after starting with a single, he sent down two slot balls, a wide full-toss, a wide long-hop, and another full-toss. Shedge took ruthless toll, going 6, 6, 4, 4, 6. Twenty-seven off that over, and PBKS were suddenly looking at a decent total.

Holder denies PBKS their big finish

That over was the centrepiece of a 79-run partnership between Shedge and Stoinis. Shedge, who was at one stage batting on 13 off 14 balls, rushed to a 24-ball half-century. He then flicked Rabada for a nonchalant six in the 16th over before falling to Rabada's extra bounce, caught behind for 57 off 29.

Stoinis held the key to a big finish for PBKS, but Holder forced a miscue out of him with an into-the-pitch cutter from around the wicket in the 18th over. When he followed up with an inducker to bowl Xavier Bartlett comprehensively, PBKS were eight down with 13 balls remaining.

Marco Jansen hit Rashid Khan for a six and four in the final over to haul PBKS past 160, but it wasn't quite the magnitude of finish they may have hoped for. Only 45 came off their last five overs.

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Sai Sudharsan and GT stay in second gear

This was an innings of many delectable shots: the high-elbow drive through the covers off Bartlett in the first over, the hooked six over fine leg off Jansen in the sixth, and expert riding of the bounce to cut and carve the ball behind point. But there wasn't a whole lot of intent to force the pace off balls that weren't in his hitting zones.

And all of GT's batters played pretty much this way, with the caveat that this was still an awkward pitch to bat on. Jos Buttler picked off a trademark scooped six over short fine leg, but his 26 consumed 22 balls. Nishant Sindhu, making his IPL debut, fell for 15 off 11. Washington scored 16 off his first 14 balls.

And so, it came to a situation where, after Sai Sudharsan and Impact Player Rahul Tewatia fell in the 15th and 17th overs, GT suddenly came under a bit of pressure.

But with 11 to get off the final over, they found a way to push through. Arshad flicked an almost-perfect Stoinis yorker for four, and then, with three to get off two balls, Washington coolly stepped across his stumps and scooped a full-toss over the fine leg boundary to take GT over the line.