Shreyas Iyer wants Priyansh Arya and Cooper Connolly to compete for the most number of sixes in IPL 2026 and is willing to gift his bat to the winner. That sums up the mood in the Punjab Kings camp quite well.

Shreyas’s team remain unbeaten after six matches as they outplayed Lucknow Super Giants by 54 runs in Mullanpur on Sunday. With five wins (plus an abandoned match), Punjab sit atop the points table.

Punjab, especially Priyansh and Connolly, made it look like a game of sixes as they smashed a total of 21 to amass 254/7 in 20 overs. Priyansh and Connolly hit 16 of them.

It was always going to be an Everest of a chase for Lucknow, who have struggled with their batting this season. They showed the fight, with Mitchell Marsh (40 off 28 balls), Ayush Badoni (35 off 21 balls), captain Rishabh Pant (43 off 23 balls) and Aiden Markram (42 off 22 balls) shining briefly, but it never looked enough.

The chasers were chased by the pressure of a demanding required run rate — they needed 22.6 runs per over from the last five overs — and Lucknow ultimately had to make peache with 200/5 in 20 overs.

While all the Punjab bowlers did decently, Vijaykumar Vyshak (1/30) and Yuzvendra Chahal (1/36) deserve special mention.

The fireworks

The first half of the match was all about some extraordinary hitting from Priyansh and Connolly after Prabhsimran Singh was dismissed for a duck by Mohammed Shami in the very first over of the game.

The picture could have been different had Pant not erred in not taking a review of an LBW chance after Mohsin Khan hit Connolly’s pad in the second over.

Connolly, on 4 then, would have been out if Pant had gone for DRS.

Instead, Priyansh and Connolly fed off each other’s hitting prowess as they stitched a 182-run partnership in 13.2 overs. The point to note was that most of those runs came after the Powerplay (63/1).

Priyansh was the more murderous of the two as he batted at an incredible strike rate of 251.35. He hit nine sixes and four fours in his innings of 93 off 37 balls. Connolly was not too far behind, making 87 off 46 balls with seven sixes and eight fours.

Such overwhelming was Punjab’s batting prowess that skipper Shreyas didn’t even talk about his team (Shashank Singh) missing three easy catches.