From Invincible to Invisible. And the Team That Still Won’t Play Its Ace.

There is a particular cruelty that only cricket can deliver.

You spend eight weeks watching a tournament. You watch teams that were supposed to win fall apart. You watch teams that had no business surviving somehow stay alive. You watch one franchise go from one point in six games to four wins in their next four. And just when you think you understand the shape of the season, one week arrives and tears everything up.

Last week was that week.

Seven days. Eight matches. And by the time Lucknow’s Nicholas Pooran had hammered four consecutive sixes into the Ekana night air on Friday, the IPL 2026 playoff picture had gone from being somewhat complicated to being genuinely, beautifully, painfully chaotic.

I am a KKR fan sitting here on a Saturday, three days after Virat Kohli went to Raipur and scored 105 not out against us. Three days. The wound is still open. But first, let me take you through the week that was.

Saturday, 9th May. Jaipur. GT vs RR.

Before this match even started, there was a piece of news that changed its entire complexion.

Riyan Parag had pulled a hamstring. The RR captain, who had just played one of the innings of the season, a 90 off 50 in their previous game, would miss this one. His team would be led by Yashasvi Jaiswal on IPL captaincy debut.

Pressure on a 22-year-old kid in front of his home crowd, against the hottest team in the tournament. You could already see what was coming.

Shubman Gill did not make it easy. Neither did Sai Sudharsan. The two of them set Gujarat’s platform in the way that has become so familiar in this second half of the season. Controlled at the top, explosive through the middle, and then Rashid Khan finishing the job with the ball. Four wickets for the leg-spinner. Rashid doing Rashid things.

RR collapsed chasing an imposing total. Five wickets gone for 99 runs. And with Jaiswal unable to rescue it almost single-handedly on captaincy debut, GT won by 77 runs.

Four consecutive wins for Gujarat. Their machine was fully operational. And it was about to get worse for everyone else.

Sunday, 10th May. Two Matches. Two Different Kinds of Drama.

The afternoon match in Chennai was the kind of game that turns a season. LSG had started as if they were the team chasing 150. They were chasing 204.

Josh Inglis happened.

85 runs off 33 balls. If you did not see it, I do not have the words to adequately convey how violent it was. LSG surged to 91 for 1 at the end of the powerplay. The highest powerplay score in their franchise history. It looked like the total was in another country.

And then CSK did what CSK do when they find something to grip.

They squeezed. They bowled themselves back into the game. LSG collapsed from 91 for 1 to 130 for 5 in the blink of an eye. From what felt like 250 to what became a very chaseable 203.

The real story of the CSK innings, though, was Urvil Patel. He walked in and hit five consecutive sixes. Five. In a row. His fifty came in 13 balls, equalling Yashasvi Jaiswal’s record for the fastest fifty in IPL history. And then he was gone, and CSK still had to somehow get over the line.

They did. With four balls to spare. Jamie Overton with the ball, Shivam Dube with the bat in the last moments. CSK’s third consecutive win. A team that looked dead and buried in April is now fighting for their playoff lives.

The evening match in Raipur was of a completely different character. RCB versus MI. And it went to the last ball.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar, in his last few seasons of professional cricket, is playing some of the most important cricket of his career. He tore through MI’s top order with the new ball. And then with 15 to get off the final over and MI’s Raj Bawa bowling, he hit a six to make it 3 off 2 balls. And Rasikh Salam played the final ball with soft hands, ran two, and RCB scrambled over the line by 2 wickets.

Two wickets. Last ball. And somewhere in that dramatic end, Bhuvneshwar became the first pacer to take 200 IPL wickets.

MI were eliminated. The five-time champions, with Rohit and Bumrah in their squad, out of the tournament before the final ten matches. LSG already gone. The bottom two confirmed.

Monday, 11th May. Dharamsala. PBKS vs DC.

Let me tell you about Punjab Kings.

A few weeks ago, they were unbeaten. They were the table-toppers. They were the team that was supposed to be the story of this season. Shreyas Iyer with his IPL winner’s instinct, Ricky Ponting on the dugout, Cooper Connolly arriving from nowhere and batting like a dream. Everything felt like it was pointing towards PBKS finally winning an IPL after decades of near-misses.

And then something broke.

Dharamsala on Monday was their fourth consecutive defeat. DC chased down 211, which is the highest successful chase in Delhi’s franchise history, with an over to spare. The very target that PBKS set, thinking it was enough.

Four in a row. A team that was winning everything is now losing everything. The table has shifted. And PBKS, still in fourth with 13 points, are now looking over their shoulder at five teams breathing down their necks rather than looking ahead at a playoff spot that once felt secure.

What happened? I have a theory. When you are the surprise package, nobody knows how to bowl at you. But the IPL is also a league where data moves fast. Analysts get films in 48 hours. Coaches convene at midnight with bowling plans. And the second time around a tournament, every opponent has your blueprint.

Connolly is still exceptional. Priyansh Arya is still dangerous. But the element of surprise that carried PBKS through the first half has eroded. And the bowling, which was never the strength of this squad, is now being exposed as the tournament’s best batting lineups come at them a second time with full information.

Four losses in a row. I said from the first week of this blog that the IPL finds you out eventually. PBKS are being found out.

Tuesday, 12th May. Ahmedabad. GT vs SRH.

Two table-toppers. One would climb higher. The other would face their worst day of the season.

I need you to understand the scale of what happened to SRH on Tuesday night.

They were bowled out for 86.

86 runs. Sunrisers Hyderabad. The team with Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma and Heinrich Klaasen. The team that had been dismantling bowling attacks for two months. 86 runs in 14.5 overs.

Kagiso Rabada and Jason Holder bowled like men possessed. Rabada 3 for 28. Holder 3 for 20. Prasidh Krishna returning from injury to take 2 for 23. Four-pronged pace. Clinical. Relentless. GT’s biggest win in their IPL history. 82 runs.

Pat Cummins stood at the post-match and said the right things. Said batting failures happen. Said the team has been excellent all season. Said they go back to what got them their wins.

He is right that one collapse does not define a team. But it raised a question that nobody had been asking about SRH all season. What happens when the pitch is not a road? What happens when the ball does something early, when a smart attack targets your aggressive top order before they can get set?

GT went to the top of the table. Five wins in a row. A team playing with the kind of quiet confidence that proper title contenders have.

Wednesday, 13th May. Raipur. RCB vs KKR.

I have to be honest with you.

I wanted KKR to win this one badly. Not just for the points. For the pride of proving that the four-match winning run was not a temporary burst but the beginning of something. For the feeling that we were genuinely back.

Virat Kohli ended that conversation.

105 not out. 60 balls. Eleven fours. Three sixes. His 9th IPL century. His first in over two years. And one of the most technically immaculate chases you will see from him. Not the Kohli of 2016 when every other shot was a boundary. This was the Kohli of experience and craft, reading the game, building, and then accelerating exactly when KKR’s fielding started to tire.

He opened the batting. By the end of the powerplay he was already on 30 off 14 balls and RCB were 66 for 1. There was no rescue act. No crisis to navigate. Just Kohli dismantling an inexperienced KKR seam attack from the very first over as if he had settled a personal score before anyone else had noticed there was one. Bethell went early. Padikkal came in as impact player and the two of them built a 92-run second wicket partnership that put the chase to bed before the halfway point. KKR dropped catches. Kohli punished every single one. That particular ruthlessness he saves for teams that give him a life.

Angkrish Raghuvanshi had batted brilliantly for KKR. 71 off 46. A career best. Rinku had done Rinku things. KKR posted 192.

It was not enough. Not against Kohli on a day like that.

RCB won by 6 wickets with 5 balls to spare. They went to the top of the table.

And now I want to talk about the question that every KKR fan is asking and not one person in that management has adequately answered.

The Pathirana Question. And Why It Matters More Than You Think.

KKR bought Matheesha Pathirana for Rs 18 crore.

Let that number sit with you for a moment. Eighteen crore rupees. For a bowler who was the best death specialist in this tournament for three seasons running at CSK. The slinger from Sri Lanka who bowls from angles that make batters look like they are playing a completely different game to the one they trained for.

He arrived in India weeks ago. He has been training with the squad. As recently as last week, KKR’s assistant coach Shane Watson told the press that Pathirana is fit and ready. That having a player of his calibre ready to go gives the group enormous confidence.

Ready. Fit. Rs 18 crore. Not playing.

The reason given: KKR did not want to break a winning combination. They had found a formula with Finn Allen, Cameron Green, Rovman Powell, and Narine as their four overseas. They won four in a row. So they kept it. And kept it.

I understand the instinct. Rahane is not wrong to back something that is working. The history of IPL management is full of cases where a franchise broke a winning combination because they panicked, and it cost them. So I get the hesitation.

But here is what I cannot get past.

Pathirana is not a luxury player. He is not the kind of signing you carry for depth. He is an 18-crore weapon specifically designed for the knockout stages of a cricket tournament, when batters are under pressure and death bowling is the difference between teams that make playoffs and teams that go home. And he has been sitting in the dugout while Varun Chakravarthy has been bowling with an injury on his foot.

When a bowler is more irreplaceable injured than an 18-crore fit specialist is at full health, you have to ask whether the management is making decisions or just avoiding decisions.

KKR’s winning streak ended in Raipur on Wednesday. Kohli exposed exactly what I have been worried about. An inexperienced, wayward seam attack that does not have the death bowling quality to contain the best batters in the tournament when a surface offers something. Rabada and Holder did it to SRH the night before. Kohli did it to our seamers on Wednesday.

Pathirana bowls yorkers. Real, late-swinging, slinging, deceptive yorkers at the death. Against a Kohli or a Patidar in the last four overs, that is not an option. It is a necessity.

With three home matches at Eden Gardens coming up, against GT tonight, and then RR and CSK, the management has run out of time for patience. If Pathirana does not play at Eden, the question is not tactical anymore. It is something more uncomfortable about how this franchise makes its decisions under pressure.

Thursday, 14th May. Dharamsala. MI vs PBKS.

If Monday was PBKS’s nightmare, Thursday made it worse.

A fifth consecutive defeat. This time against an MI team that has nothing to play for, that had already been eliminated, captained by Bumrah because the senior leadership situation is murky enough that even Suryakumar Yadav is not certain of his role.

Tilak Varma decided the matter on his own. 75 not out off 33 balls. Chasing 201 in Dharamsala, MI knocked it off with a ball to spare.

PBKS needed to win this. They needed to find something, anything, that would arrest the slide. Instead they got their fifth consecutive defeat, with one ball to spare.

Five losses in a row. From table-toppers to a team genuinely fighting to hold onto fourth place.

Friday, 15th May. Lucknow. LSG vs CSK.

An already-eliminated team played the role of assassin.

CSK came to Ekana needing a win. They left having been dismantled.

Mitchell Marsh had one of those evenings where he looked like he was batting in a completely different dimension to everyone else on the field. 90 off 38 balls. Seven sixes. A 135-run opening partnership with Josh Inglis. When Marsh is in this mood, there is no bowling plan in the world that stops him. He advances, creates room, and hits it somewhere that fielders are not. Over and over.

Akash Singh, playing his first match of the season, bowled beautifully. Dismissed Ruturaj Gaikwad, Sanju Samson, and Urvil Patel in the powerplay. A note pulled from his pocket after each wicket, which read: Akash knows how to take wickets in a T20 game. A touch theatrical, but when you are performing like that on debut, you have earned it.

Kartik Sharma, the Rs 14.20 crore uncapped youngster that CSK backed at the auction against all conventional wisdom, scored 71 off 42. His highest T20 score. Perhaps the moment that justifies the price tag. But it was not enough. LSG chased it with 20 balls to spare. Nicholas Pooran finished it with four consecutive sixes because why not.

CSK, after being six wins from their last ten, are now at 12 points, sixth in the table. Needing two wins from two, and results to go their way.

Where We Stand. No One Has Qualified Yet.

Let me give you the picture clearly because nothing about it is settled.

RCB lead with 16 points from 12 matches. GT are right behind them on 16 from 12. SRH have 14 from 12. PBKS have 13 from 12 and are sliding. RR have 12 from 12. CSK have 12 from 12. DC have 10 from 12 but their NRR is a disaster. KKR have 9 from 11 with three matches remaining, all at home.

Nobody has qualified. Not one team.

GT can seal it tonight against KKR at Eden Gardens. RCB are close. SRH need to hold their nerve. And the bottom half of that top six is genuinely a coin flip.

What is clear is this. Eight teams still mathematically alive. Two teams already eliminated. And the playoffs begin on May 26.

Eleven days. And KKR’s fate depends entirely on what they do in that purple and gold jersey at the ground where this franchise was born.

KKR. The Thread. The Three Games. The Choice.

I have been writing about KKR’s season in this blog since April. I have been through the despair of the opening few weeks. I have felt the hope of the four-match winning run. And after Wednesday in Raipur, I am now in a state that I can only describe as cautious terror.

Nine points from eleven matches. A win tonight against GT would take us to 11. Wins in all three would take us to 15. That is probably enough, depending on results elsewhere, but not certain.

What makes this moment so uniquely uncomfortable is that KKR are not a bad team. They are an inconsistent one. They have Narine and Varun when fit. They have Anukul Roy who has been excellent. They have Raghuvanshi finding his feet, Rinku in form, Allen when he fires.

But they are also a team that is carrying an 18-crore bowler in the dugout while going into the final stretch of the season with an inexperienced seam attack that cannot hold the game in the final four overs.

Eden Gardens tonight. GT’s bowling. Rabada and Holder on a wicket that will have something early.

If Pathirana is not in that XI, I will not understand it. I will watch every ball of it. But I will not understand it.

Three home games. The fortress of world cricket. The roar of 66,000 when Narine runs in and that slow off-break grips and turns.

Everything we have been building towards is here. The question is whether the management trusts the moment enough to make the bold call they have been avoiding for three weeks.

I know what the Eden crowd would say if given the chance. They would say: play him.

If you missed last week’s blog, read it here.

What do you think KKR should do at Eden tonight? Pathirana in or stay with the combination? And is PBKS’s slide terminal or can Shreyas Iyer turn this around in the final week? Drop it in the comments.