Preity Zinta Calls IPL 2026 ‘Rollercoaster’ as PBKS Miss Playoffs

Punjab Kings finished the 2026 Indian Premier League fifth on 15 points, one short of the Rajasthan Royals, after losing six matches in a row through the back half of a season they had once led for 22 days. Co-owner Preity Zinta posted a thank-you note to supporters on X late Wednesday, calling the campaign a “rollercoaster ride.” The word fits a franchise whose playoff probability fell from 97 percent to 23 percent over a fortnight.

The note went up hours after the Royals beat the Mumbai Indians by 30 runs at the Wankhede Stadium on May 24 to seize the fourth and final playoff spot. Punjab were left with the same outcome the franchise has lived through in 13 of 18 IPL seasons since 2008: a tournament that finished without them.

The Message Behind the Rollercoaster Line

Zinta’s post on X was short, signed off with the Punjab Kings hashtag she has used since the original Kings XI rebrand. It read like a co-owner closing the books on a season, not a celebrity working a feed.

A big thank you to all the supporters of PBKS for standing strong with us all through the rollercoaster ride of IPL 2026. From the highs to the lows and everything in between, felt more wholesome with all of your love. Till we meet again, all my love and best wishes #Ting.

Preity Zinta, who has held a 23 percent stake in KPH Dream Cricket Private Limited since 2008, posted the note on May 27 via her verified X account on the Punjab Kings franchise update. She was the first female celebrity owner in the league.

Fan replies under the post arrived in the same register. The repeated lines were less about results than about staying:

• “No matter what, we ride for Punjab. Win or lose, we still back our team.”
• “Win or lose is part of the game, we are always with PBKS. Please don’t change the players. This team made us proud.”
• “Next year we will pick up the trophy of IPL 2027.”

The contrast with how the Bengaluru and Mumbai supporter bases respond to early exits is part of why the franchise’s brand-value growth has outpaced the league for two seasons running.

Six Straight Wins, Then Six Straight Losses

PBKS opened IPL 2026 with the cleanest start of any team in the tournament. Shreyas Iyer, the Indian batter retained as captain after his title with Kolkata Knight Riders in 2024, led the side to six consecutive wins across the opening fortnight. Ricky Ponting, the former Australia captain serving his second season as head coach at Punjab, kept the same playing eleven through that run with only injury-forced changes.

The team sat first on the points table for 22 days, the longest single stretch any side held top spot in the tournament. The aggressive top order built around Iyer, Prabhsimran Singh and Cooper Connolly, the Australian all-rounder signed at the December mini-auction for ₹3 crore, had analysts treating a playoff berth as locked. Mid-season projections from cricket data services put the franchise’s qualification probability at 97 percent.

Then nothing held. The Mohali side dropped six matches in succession across the second half of the league phase. Bowling stocks thinned with Ben Dwarshuis nursing a side strain, Connolly’s strike rate dropped under 120, and Iyer himself went four innings without a half-century. By game 13 the qualification model had moved to 23 percent.

The captain’s century against Lucknow Super Giants in the second-to-last league fixture, an unbeaten 101 chased down with Prabhsimran’s 69 off 39 balls, ended the losing run and lifted the team back to fourth. Iyer’s line after the match read drier than the moment.

We won eventually after six consecutive losses. It’s a great positive.

Shreyas Iyer, speaking at the post-match presentation after the seven-wicket win over LSG on May 22. The cushion lasted 48 hours.

The Math at the Bottom of the Table

Going into the final scheduled fixture, three sides remained alive for the fourth playoff slot: Rajasthan Royals on 14 points, Punjab Kings on 15, and Kolkata Knight Riders on 13 with a game in hand. RR needed to beat Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede and finish above PBKS on points. They did exactly that.

The Royals posted 205 for 8 in 20 overs, with Dhruv Jurel contributing 38 and Jofra Archer chipping in a quick 32 down the order. Archer then returned 3 for 28 with the new ball, breaking Suryakumar Yadav’s 60 at a critical moment in the chase. Mumbai finished 175 for 9. The 30-run margin pushed RR to 16 points and the final knockout berth, one point above Punjab and three above Kolkata.

Punjab finished one point short of the cut. Two of their six second-half losses were decided by margins of under 10 runs, and one was tied at the end of 20 overs before going to a Super Over. Different ball anywhere in those three games and the math at the Wankhede stops mattering.

A Franchise That Has Lived This Heartbreak Before

The shape of this collapse is not new for Punjab. The franchise has reached the playoffs only three times in 18 seasons and has played one final, which it lost. The thing that has changed under Iyer and Ponting is the proximity to the bracket; the thing that has not changed is the outcome.

The 2014 High Watermark

The franchise’s only final remains the 2014 edition under George Bailey, with Glenn Maxwell scoring 552 runs at a strike rate of 187.75 during the league stage. Punjab finished top of the table that year and reached the title match in Bengaluru, where Kolkata Knight Riders chased down 200 with three balls to spare. The two competing narratives of that night, dominant Punjab side and clutch KKR finish, have shadowed every PBKS playoff conversation since.

Eleven Years of Misses, One Final

Between 2015 and 2024, Punjab missed the playoffs in nine of ten seasons. The 2023 campaign under Shikhar Dhawan ended eighth. The 2024 campaign, played as the rebranded Punjab Kings under Sam Curran’s interim leadership, finished ninth, salvaged only by the world-record successful chase of 262 against KKR in match 42. The franchise’s overall win rate of roughly 45 percent across 263 matches sits among the lowest of the original eight IPL teams.

2025 Was the Pivot

The 2025 season changed the trajectory. A major squad overhaul at the mega-auction brought Iyer in as captain and Ponting in as head coach. The team finished top of the league table on 19 points and reached the final, where it lost to Royal Challengers Bengaluru. The 2025 run ended an 11-year playoff drought and is the reason the 2026 collapse stings the way it does. The bar has shifted from “making the playoffs” to “holding a position that was already booked.”

The Loyalty Economy Around Mohali

What the fan replies under Zinta’s note point to is the durable asset on this franchise’s balance sheet. Punjab Kings recorded the steepest brand-value increase of any IPL side in the most recent season Houlihan Lokey valuation, and the supporter base around the Mohali and Mullanpur grounds has stayed intact through the entire post-2014 trophy drought.

• $141 million Punjab Kings brand value as of 2025, up from $101 million the previous year.
• 39.6 percent year-over-year brand-value growth, the highest among all 10 IPL franchises.
• 23 percent Preity Zinta’s stake in the KPH Dream Cricket consortium that owns the team.

The consortium structure matters here. Zinta’s 23 percent sits alongside Mohit Burman of Dabur on 46 percent, Ness Wadia of the Wadia Group on 23 percent, and Karan Paul of Apeejay Surrendra on 8 percent. None of those four has signalled any appetite for a roster reset, and the December 2025 mini-auction saw the franchise hold a 21-player core and spend just ₹11.50 crore filling four slots.

The continuity is partly a choice and partly a constraint. Iyer’s retention price absorbed a large fraction of the cap, and Ponting’s three-year coaching contract runs through the 2027 season. The supporter loyalty that propped up the brand-value jump is also what gives the ownership group room to keep this group together for another cycle.

The 2027 Window for Iyer and Ponting

What the franchise actually has to weigh now is whether the 2026 collapse was a structural problem or a noise event. Two of the six losses came in tight chases against the eventual top three. Two more came in matches where the death-overs bowling, the pre-tournament weak link, gave up 70-plus in the final five overs. The squad has another season under contract with the same captain and the same coach. The pieces for a rebuild are not on the table.

What is on the table is the 2027 auction window, which arrives next December with most of the league’s marquee Indian internationals out of contract again. If Punjab’s loyalty equity holds through one more off-season the way it held through Zinta’s Wednesday note, the franchise gets to spend that auction from a position of strength.

If the same fanbase that wrote “please don’t change the players” under the rollercoaster post is still writing it after a second straight playoff miss, the calculation changes. Until then, Mohali keeps the captain, keeps the coach, and keeps the supporters who never left in the first place.