PrabhArya: The court jesters of chaos
This year, the Prabhsimran Singh-Priyansh Arya pair has made their flaws almost invisible, while feasting on what they want.
Punjab drop catches, and they don’t take wickets. Yet (and this is a big yet), they have been near top of the table for most of the year.
In fact, they were undefeated for ages. Without bowlers taking poles, or fielders catching them. Maybe this is the only franchise in the IPL that could combine this kind of record. Until very recently, they have been a deeply unserious team. They are funny, even when they are good. The perfect combination.
Praatibh from Cricket by JB just did a piece looking at all the drops in the league, and they weren’t just in front, but three drops clear of second place. Missed chances don’t always mean what fans think they do. A team creating heaps of potential catches will often have more drops as well.
However for them, this obviously affected their bowling. Yuzi Chahal is having an ok season by numbers; if you factor in drops, he’d be doing much better. So they have a bowling line-up that should on paper, take wickets. But on the field, they are matched with a team without hands.
(Shashank Singh on his own is somehow to blame for 106% of their drops.)
This creates a situation where Punjab bowlers can’t take any wickets, which is one of the reasons their team should win games.
That means for them to win, which they have a lot, something went right. And this year, their opening partnership went about as right as anything has.
Before this year, Punjab had Prabhsimran Singh and Priyansh Arya, now they’ve been fully portmanteau-ed. That is the new trend, like it was for celebrity couples a decade or so back. But while JaiSoorya and Travishek are more natural pairings of players who would be stars on their own, this combination feels more random, almost accidental, and inspired from the seasons when Punjab were the clown car of chaos. Yet, they form this almost perfect modern opening partnership.
PrabhArya, the two harlequin hitters of the IPL, have won Punjab an awful lot of games in the last two years.
***
In the first Men’s World Cup on the opening day, India had to chase 335. Sunil Gavaskar scored 36 off 174 balls. He had decided that the target was too big to chase. He didn’t want India to be embarrassed by being bowled out. During the innings, a man ran out on the field to argue with him. Most of us find this funny now, but at the time, this was no joke.
51 years later, in a run chase of 265 in 20 overs, Prabhsimran Singh was 41 off 13 and Priyansh Arya was 37 off 11. They are the court jesters of chaos.
Gavaskar was making what he believed was the rational and pragmatic choice for his era and team. Prabhsimran Singh and Priyansh Arya took that logic, scrunched it up and set it on fire. The relationship between batters and what’s possible has been fundamentally rewired. And these two lunatics aren’t the next step in that evolution. They’re proof that it mutated.
After nine games, Prabhsimran and Arya as a pair have scored 360 runs this season. Their partnership average of 51 is the second highest this season. The crazier part is they’re going at 15 runs per over - nearly 3 points better than Sunrisers in second place.
For a minimum of 300 partnership runs in a season, Prabhsimran and Arya are the fastest-scoring opening pair ever. Travishek were all people could talk about two years ago, and they’re outperforming them comfortably - incidentally beating their 2024 RPO of 13.21 in the process.
They average 86 at 12.4 RPO in the powerplay. They average 20 more than Gujarat, a team set up to make their top order go deep.
After nine games, this was the second-highest average by a powerplay team in an IPL season and the highest RPO ever, with the second best-team being this year’s Boss Baby-led Rajasthan.
Punjab have chased five targets this season, three of them being above 210. In all these chases, these two systematically dismantled the equation needed to win. The required rates dropped by 0.99, 1.92 and 3.4. The last one was borderline insulting.
Before the season, I thought one of the issues for this team would be them regularly chasing 220 plus totals. Not because they didn’t have hitting, but because I wasn’t sure if it was repeatable.
In half a season, they became the most inevitable crushing machine in T20.
In those first nine games, Priyansh Arya scored 283 runs at a strike rate of 250 while averaging 42. Prabhsimran Singh was at 346 runs, striking at 179 and averaging 58. One of them almost always seems to pass 30, despite the fact the first ball is treated like the last delivery of the innings.
The first ten ball strike rates this season are 257 for Arya and 189 for Prabhsimran. They are first and seventh quickest. We’ve reached a point in T20 where a guy striking at 189 in his first ten balls is the “anchor”.
Prabhsimran Singh has been around in the IPL for a while now. He made his IPL debut in 2019 when he was just 19 years old. However, till 2022, he only played six IPL games.
2023 was his first full season, when he made 358 runs at an average of 25 and a strike rate of 150. A true average of -14 and a true strike rate of 14. He was a short-haul, big hitter. However, nearly a third of his runs came in one innings.
In 2024, they tried him as a number three, and it didn’t work. So he came back to open, and we have what he does now. In 2025, he scored 549 runs at a true average of -6 and a true strike rate of 16.
This year is a little different from 2025, because he’s not whacking spin, but destroying seam bowling. He stands deep in his crease; sometimes it feels like he might fart the bails off. But from that position, he is doing something crazy, smashing pace everywhere without being dismissed. Through nine games, his true average was 209 against it. Against spin, he wasn’t staying in or smashing it anywhere near that fast.
Throughout his career, Prabhsimran has been a destroyer of fuller lengths and bouncers.
However, a big reason for Prabhsimran’s development versus pace is him getting better versus both good and back-of-a-length deliveries.
In 2023, he could not stay in against any length that a normal human seam bowler would deliver to him.
When the bowler went into the wicket aimed at him, he was entirely stuck.
But he worked it out, and he has found a way to stay in against length, and whack it when it’s slightly shorter. With his power, he just needed a method; he has that now.
And what is wild is that he went from someone with weaknesses everywhere, to one of the best players in the league against seam.
And yet, for years, spin was his thing. If you think Prabhsimran is a whole new man, he is. But like he needs to keep his life in perfect harmony, he has somehow stopped doing well against spin. He was a monster before, and so far in 2026 he hasn’t been.
So this beast man changed his beast mode. But that is ok, as he is only half of PrabhArya.
(You can find any explanations regarding our advanced metrics here.)
Priyansh Arya was a late bloomer. His big boom was after a huge 2024 Delhi Premier League season. He followed that up in the SMAT as well. And suddenly, he was an IPL cricketer.
In his first IPL season, he scored 475 runs. His true average was -13, and his true strike rate was 34. Here for a good time, not a long one.
Those numbers were similar across pace and spin; he just went much faster against the tweakers.
Again, like his brother from another mother, if seamers bowled a good or back of a length delivery to him, he really struggled. You just had to bowl quality deliveries to him and he was out.
If we look at the areas that troubled him the most, it was mainly good/back of a length outside off. He made 57 off 39 balls and was dismissed five times. This is classic Test match line and length, and it’s understandable why a man that’s only played three first class innings in his life would struggle against it.
In the same zone that troubled him last year, he’s made 53 off 17 balls and is yet to be dismissed. He’s turned what was an extreme weakness into an extreme strength.
It’s like he was a video game character who found power-up codes online.
In 2026, he had a true strike rate of 95 through the first nine games.
Against pace, he has a true average of 3 and a true strike rate of 82.
Actual video game numbers.
Both of these guys just re-coded themselves for the Impact Sub era.
It isn’t that Prabhsimran and Arya don’t have flaws. They have glorious ones.
Both have issues against back of a length at 140+ KPH. Between them, they are dismissed about every 6.5 balls against this. Think of Poor Prabhsimran stuck on the crease to Kagiso Rabada.
But the fun time good boys destroy bowlers when they miss the length. Arya against other lengths at high pace has a strike rate of 282. Prabhsimran against non-back of a length balls has a strike rate of 186. You either make them look silly, or they pump you. It’s Russian roulette batting.
So spin is the direction to choose, and we meant that very literally.
The ball that spins into Arya and away from Prabhsimran troubles both of them. This is a truly wonderful thing for teams, because one is a lefty and the other holds the bat right-handed. It is Arya, who is the freaky moonchild here.
Most left-handers grow up just wanting to eat the ball spinning back into them. Chris Gayle counts the sixes he hit from left-arm orthodox bowlers when sleeping at night. This is where southpaws get a huge advantage in T20. And Arya just gives it all back.
He cannot stay in long enough to feast. Ben Dunk would roll over in his grave at these numbers, were he actually dead.
Teams actually have a lot of options for spinning the ball into left-handers, because of all the righties out there. And Prabhsimram’s decline against spin has meant that you can bowl this to both of them.
But there is a funny thing about T20. In the powerplay, no matter how much a batting team might struggle against the turning ball, up front, with the field in, bowling teams get nervy.
This year, PrabhArya scored 19 runs off Harsh Dubey in an over, and 20 from Axar Patel. So teams have stopped bowling this direction of spin to them. If you look closer though, you’ll remember that Arya gave a half chance to Dubey and was dropped off Axar.
The greatest thing an attacking player can do is make you think there is nothing you can try against them. This year, PrabhArya have made their flaws almost invisible, while feasting on what they want.
In 2022, the Punjab Kings went with a clown car or whackhouse team. They were perhaps the first team to be fully strike rate pilled. Everyone had to score fast, every ball. They had Odean Smith, who believed that every delivery should be a six, be it with his batting or bowling.
It was hilarious and unsustainable. Arya missed that year, but Prabhsimran was there. These are the descendants of those clowns, but in terms of impact, they are more like the Joker. Cold-blooded killers who play cricket like it’s a race to the end.
It isn’t that the Joker doesn’t have a plan, he is just hiding it with madness and whimsy. Making it also impossible for Batman to do his job.
PrabhArya works the same way. All you have to do is bowl consistently over 140 KPH for 6 balls at their ribs. Or find a spinner disciplined and brave enough to bowl in the right direction while these juiced-up jesters are coming for them. And yet this year, no one has managed that.
PrabhArya is a lot of fun, but it is no joke.