107 Not Out. Maiden Century. Still Lost by 33. Connolly's Night Sums Up Everything Wrong With PBKS Right Now.
Cooper Connolly hit an unbeaten 107 off 59 balls in his maiden T20 century but PBKS lost to SRH by 33 runs at Hyderabad in IPL 2026 Match 49. Travis Head 38, Klaasen 69 and Kishan 55 powered SRH to 235, sending them to the top of the points table on 14 points.
107 not out off 59 balls. Maiden century in any format of cricket. Falling sweep over backward square leg off Shivang Kumar in the final over to get there. The Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium was silent. Punjab Kings lost by 33 runs.
Cooper Connolly had a night that will appear on his career highlight reel for the next decade. The problem is that nobody around him showed up to make it matter. The next highest score in Punjab's innings was 28. He had two lives, being dropped twice during his knock, but used them to produce the only moment of genuine class in a chase that was effectively over by the sixth over. Connolly ended unbeaten because there was nobody left to bat with him, not because he ran out of deliveries.
At the other end of this match, Sunrisers Hyderabad did what SRH do in IPL 2026. They batted first, they went hard from ball one, they posted 235 for 4, and they moved to the top of the points table on 14 points. Their seventh win of the season. Their record defending totals above 220 in the IPL remains intact: played several, lost none.
The First Six Overs Said Everything
SRH's powerplay plan has been the same all season. Abhishek Sharma defended the first ball from Arshdeep Singh, then lofted the second over extra cover for six. He then took Jansen apart: six, four, six, dot, four. Travis Head, quieter until that point on two off four balls, suddenly pulled back-to-back sixes off Arshdeep into the deep square-leg boundary. By the end of the powerplay, SRH were 79 for 1. Their powerplay run rate this season coming in was 11.75. Wednesday evening they went at 13.16.
PBKS dropped three catches and missed a stumping. Heinrich Klaasen was put down on nine. He went on to make 69 off 43 balls. Ishan Kishan was dropped early too, ended up with 55 off 32. Together they stitched 88 runs in eight overs and turned a good total into a 236 run target. Dropped catches at this level are not just fielding errors. They are match-deciding errors. PBKS have now made them in three consecutive games and lost all three.
Nitish Kumar Reddy's cameo in the death overs completed the work, pulling Jansen over deep midwicket before Klaasen finished the innings with a six and a four off the last over. The message was familiar: SRH bat deep, hit hard, and do not relent even when the asking rate has already made the match difficult for the opposition.
Connolly's Chase and Why It Was Never Going to Be Enough
PBKS needed 236 off 20 overs. They lost their top three cheaply. Prabhsimran Singh, Shreyas Iyer, and Marcus Stoinis all went inside the first twelve overs without contributing significantly, and PBKS were 114 for 5 at the halfway stage. From there, Connolly needed a miracle and a partner. He found neither, which is why his century ended up being one of the loneliest in this tournament's recent history.
His fifty came off 34 balls, by which point the required rate had already crossed 16. His final 57 runs came at a rate that, in any other context, would have won matches. The problem was the context. He was hitting into empty net run rate territory, scoring centuries that improved his personal tournament numbers and nothing else. The SRH bowlers, particularly Pat Cummins and the two left-arm spinners Harsh Dubey and Shivang Kumar, kept bowling slow balls into the surface to make timing difficult. PBKS's middle order never found the rhythm that the asking rate demanded.
Connolly reached his hundred with a falling sweep. It was instinctive and confident and entirely in keeping with a knock that showcased a genuinely talented young batter operating at the top of his game. It just happened to come in a match that was already gone.
Punjab's Worrying Slide
Three losses in a row. Nine consecutive defeats at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad. PBKS arrived on Wednesday as table leaders with 13 points. They leave fourth, a point behind SRH at the top, and facing questions about their batting depth below the top three that a Connolly century cannot paper over.
Shreyas Iyer's captaincy has also come under scrutiny during this losing run. The bowling changes in all three defeats have been reactionary rather than proactive, and the fielding, which dropped catches and missed a stumping against SRH, has undermined two separate bowling efforts in Hyderabad. It is a three match sample, which is too small to draw wide conclusions from, but the slide from table leaders to fourth across seven days is the kind of momentum shift that affects dressing room confidence in ways that are hard to quantify.
PBKS next play on May 12. SRH are on 14 points and have a week to sit at the top of the table before the tournament's final stretch begins. Connolly will use his century as fuel. The question is whether the batters who finished at 28 and below in that innings use it as motivation or as proof that SRH are simply a level above what this PBKS side can handle right now.
Was Connolly's 107 not out the most impressive innings of IPL 2026 in a losing cause, or does it simply highlight how brittle PBKS are outside their top three?
