IPL: Punjab Kings have started their campaign in IPL 2026 with a bang. Punjab Kings defeated Gujarat Titans by 3 wickets in their first match. The hero of this victory of Punjab was 22 year old Cooper Connolly. Cooper played a brilliant innings while debuting in IPL. He scored a brilliant half-century and returned unbeaten. He played an innings of 72 runs in 44 balls. He hit 5 fours and 5 sixes in his match-winning innings. Earlier, Punjab Kings displayed brilliant bowling and restricted Gujarat Titans to the score of 162 runs. Spinner Yuzvendra Chahal bowled economically and took 2 wickets for 28 runs in 4 overs, while fast bowler Vijaykumar Vaishak put a break on Gujarat’s innings by taking 3 important wickets. Captain Shubman Gill scored the maximum 39 runs for Gujarat.
Gill gave a great start
After losing the toss and coming to bat first, Gujarat Titans had a strong start. Gill appeared aggressive from the beginning and gave a fast start to the team with the help of fours and sixes. The team’s score reached 35 runs in just 3 overs, due to which the Punjab team had to make quick changes in bowling. Captain Shneys Iyer handed the ball to Marco Jenson in the fourth over and this decision proved to be the right one. Yenson gave a big success to Punjab by dismissing Sai Sudarshan in his very first over. Sudarshan returned to the pavilion after scoring 13 runs.
Captain scored most runs
After this, Gill and Jos Buttler together took charge of the innings and made an important partnership of 46 runs for the second wicket. However, Gill, who was looking in good form, was out after scoring 39 runs. After his dismissal, Butler along with Glenn Phillips took the score forward and took the team beyond 100. Butler scored 38 runs, while Phillips contributed 25 runs. Whereas Washington Sundar added 18 runs. In the last over of the innings, Arshdeep Singh gave away 12 runs in 11 balls. In this way, Gujarat Titans team was successful in reaching 162 runs in 20 overs.
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