Follow UsHeading into the 2025 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL), the entire cricketing fraternity was looking forward to watching Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma, fondly known as Travishek, bat together against the new ball.
Head and Abhishek created a batting revolution in IPL 2024, touching never-seen-before heights in the powerplay. They etched their name in the history books and were so ridiculously scary versus the new ball that they struck at 213.2 in the first six. In one of the games, against Delhi Capitals in Vizag, the duo hit 125 in 6 overs. Yes, you read that right.
But well, new year, and we have a new p̶o̶w̶e̶r̶ Powerplay couple in town. And it’s none other than the Punjab Kings duo of Prabhsimran Singh and Priyansh Arya, who have taken over from Travishek as the most dangerous and entertaining opening pair.
44 matches into IPL 2024, Punjab are striking at 10.4 RPO in the powerplay — the joint-highest among all teams. It is courtesy this young uncapped pair, which has gone about its business like a veteran duo that’s been around for decades.
With 228 and 209 runs to their name respectively in the powerplay, Priyansh and Prabhsimran are the highest and fourth-highest run-getters in the powerplay in IPL 2025. And they are the only opening pair this season where both batters have managed over 200 runs each in the powerplay.
This is a season where Prabhsimran has been building on the good work he’s done across the past two seasons but the ultimate revelation has been young Priyansh.
Playing in his first ever IPL season, the 24-year-old left-hander has been the best batter in the powerplay, scoring both the most runs (228) while maintaining the highest strike rate (198.3). Priyansh has been so good that while he’s been striking at 198 in the powerplay, the second-best batter in the list, Ajinkya Rahane, has been going at 178, 20 runs fewer than him.
What’s truly stood out about this pair is the maturity they’ve shown. Sure enough, they started off the season throwing their bat at everything, but the two youngsters have evolved as a batting pair with every game, showing great judgement of conditions, doing what’s required of them on the day.
They added 42 runs on a pretty tricky wicket against RCB in Mullanpur a week ago, but their best showing of the season, yet, came today against KKR on a tacky Eden Gardens surface, where they took a leaf out of the book of Shubman Gill and Sai Sudharsan and merely focused on finding the gaps for the first four overs, before Prabhsimran cut loose later on.
Priyansh hit four fours across the first two overs and every single shot was a textbook hit straight out of the first session of a Test match.
56/0 was Punjab’s score at the end of the powerplay and they had got there while barely taking a risk.
Early days, but if this first half of IPL 2025 is any evidence to go by, then Punjab Kings have their opening partnership sorted for the next half a decade at least.