Varun Chakravarthy's gone right off the boil in IPL 2026. Those peak years? Ancient history now. Dig into the numbers, and you see shorter lengths—back of a length stuff mostly—plus a lousy economy on good lengths since the T20 World Cup. Batters pick his variations apart without breaking sweat. KKR's spin attack pays the price.

Hand injury's got him sidelined anyway. Missed the last few games, doubtful to feature soon. Sourav Ganguly voiced concerns over his dip.

BCCI's dropping some strict new rules for IPL 2026. No practice sessions for teams on match days. Benched players? They're restricted from the field and banned from sitting in front of those LED boards. Bus travel's mandatory for everyone.

Stuff like sleeveless jerseys at presentations will cost you. Penalties hit hard. All this to smooth out operations. Cut the disruptions. League runs cleaner.

Prabhsimran Singh, Punjab Kings opener with eight IPL seasons under his belt, couldn't praise the Impact Player rule enough. It's let young batters like him go after it without a care, grabbing way more shots at the big time. Attack freely. Shine aggressively.

Team backing's key too—Shreyas Iyer's been right there for him. Still, Prabhsimran knows consistency's what'll get him that India cap. He needs to deliver more. PBKS picked up steam off the rain-washed no-result against KKR anyway. Xavier Bartlett swung it early, snaring 2 wickets. KKR slumped to 25/2.

Bangladesh opener Tamim Iqbal's the new BCB president. The board got dissolved after those dodgy October 2025 elections. Now he's heading up an 11-member ad-hoc committee. Three months to sort out the chaos.

Big shake-up. Tamim's jumping in to get trust back in Bangladesh cricket.

Peshawar Zalmi demolished Lahore Qalandars by 76 runs. They're still unbeaten in PSL 2026. Kusal Mendis cracked 74 off 48 balls, linking with Babar Azam for a 109-run partnership that decided everything. Zalmi reached 173/7. Qalandars? They crumpled to 97 chasing it.

Once that platform sat there, Zalmi's bowlers tore in. Michael Bracewell snared 3/18. Sufiyan Muqeem and Nahid Rana landed the knockout blows. Puts Zalmi top of the points table now—after that 159-run hammering of Karachi Kings earlier, where Mendis made 109 off 52.

Kusal's on a tear in Pakistan. Any whispers from his mid-season IPL exit over security? Gone.

Babar Azam brushed off the Virat Kohli chatter right after Peshawar Zalmi nicked a 4-wicket PSL 2026 win, scraping home chasing 146 against Hyderabad Kingsmen. His 43 off 37 went early. Collapse followed. Iftikhar Ahmed's last-over hits got them over the line.

He quipped post-match that he's finished plenty of chases—no need for comparisons. PZ kept their nerve through that nail-biter. Solid start helped.

Talk of Kohli skips Babar's white-ball smarts. PSL moments like this show him cool when it counts.

Dewald Brevis can't wait to swing back into action for Chennai Super Kings. Out for three games with injury, the Rs 2.20cr middle-order beast packs elite six-hitting punch. CSK's winless in IPL 2026 so far. That aggressive approach of his? Might just fix their batting headaches at a flat Chepauk.

Stephen Fleming can't stop praising Brevis' skill, his consistency. After folding to 207 chasing RCB's 250/3—a 43-run loss—CSK host DC next. Brevis eyes an April 11 return from side strain. Chasing some momentum.

Fleming brushed off any credit for himself. Players deserve it. Dhoni too. Rough start, sure. Brevis might light the fuse, change the mindset. Get CSK moving.

Aminul Islam Bulbul, the former BCB president, just fired off a plea to the ICC. His removal? Illegal, he says—demands the elected board gets put right back in place.

Earlier, Bulbul leaned on government directives and skipped the T20 World Cup, even with ICC begging otherwise.

Now he's begging the ICC to jump into this mess of a standoff.

Delhi Capitals blew it by a single run against Gujarat Titans right there at Arun Jaitley Stadium. They had victory in their grasp during that last over—then crumbled. Down to two runs off two balls, David Miller turned down the single. Dot ball. Run-out. DC finished at 209/8, chasing GT's 210/4.

Earlier, Miller smashed plenty. Still, that call kicked off all the talk. Axar Patel, the skipper, backed it. Pathum Nissanka did too. Sunil Gavaskar liked the thinking, even if Prasidh Krishna's slower bouncer didn't quite get finished off.

Rashid Khan ran the show for GT. Back strong after surgery—3/17. Broke DC's middle order flat.

DC's had these nail-biters before. Harsha Bhogle says the bones of their side still point toward playoffs.

BCCI's dropping a tough new rule for IPL 2026. Field access? Limited to 16 named players per match. Everyone else sticks in the dugout—no more than five in bibs hovering by the boundary.

Overcrowding's gone. Non-playing squad members banned from the outfield. Matches run smoother that way, discipline sharper, commercial zones around the ground fully protected.

ICC's rolled out the schedules for East Asia-Pacific Qualifiers. Over in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, the U19 Women’s T20 World Cup EAP Qualifier kicks off 8-13 April. Five teams. Round-robin format. Winner books a spot at the 2027 event.

Japan hosts the Men's T20 World Cup EAP Qualifier come May. Nine teams split into groups, then super six. Straight to the chase on who advances.

David Warner's in strife now. Cops in Sydney charged Australia's ex-opener with drink-driving after he blew 0.104 on the breathalyser—twice the legal limit. He'll face court on May 7. Doesn't touch his gig captaining Karachi Kings in PSL 2026, though.

Turning 39 this year, Warner piles on the off-field mess since hanging up the baggy green. He'd been out on the town. Failed the breath test. Just a routine charge, sure, but when it's a bloke like him...

Eyes everywhere in cricket. PSL keeps chugging. That reputational bruise? It'll bite the divisive opener hardest.

Tamim Iqbal, Bangladesh's new ad-hoc BCB president, has made restoring cricket's battered reputation his top job. The board was dissolved over election mess, and Tamim wants to respect players, learn from errors, and hold fair elections soon.

Sunil Gavaskar let rip at overseas IPL stars yesterday. He branded the league their personal cash cow—one they barely bother milking properly. Fitness excuses from Mitchell Starc, Matheesha Pathirana, and Cameron Green? Gavaskar wasn't buying it. Bowling just four overs? That's no sweat, he reckoned.

BCCI needs to clamp down hard, he argued. Overseas boards snag the IPL cash even as their players dodge international duties. For that fat payday, Gavaskar wants total buy-in. No half-measures.

Mumbai Indians coach Kieron Pollard’s dropping a timely warning about Rajasthan Royals’ 15-year-old opener Vaibhav Suryavanshi. Don’t pump up the kid sky-high, he’s saying—then ditch him when he flops, like so many do. That’s the trap with RR’s teenage gun, who’s already blasted 200 runs in four IPL games. Strike rate? A ridiculous 266.66.

He couldn’t stress patience enough for raw talents like this. “Biggest fear,” Pollard put it, “is building them up only to tear them down when things go wrong.” RR’s flying early, sure—fresh off knocking over MI and RCB. Suryavanshi didn’t blink. MI’s scraped one win from three. Now it’s RCB at Wankhede. Both still smarting.

Henry Crocombe ripped through with 9 for 69. Sussex demolished Leicestershire by 222 runs in the County Championship opener. They won big anyway, points deduction or not.

Ollie Robinson and Crocombe grabbed five wickets apiece earlier. That left Leicestershire all out for 245, chasing Sussex's 361. A 116-run lead they enforced. Game over.

Gujarat Titans bagged their first IPL 2026 win. A nail-biter by one run against unbeaten Delhi Capitals at Arun Jaitley Stadium. Shubman Gill shook off that neck spasm—missed just one game—and cracked 70 off 45 balls. Four fours, five sixes. Anchored GT's 210 for 4 nicely. Jos Buttler raced to 52 off 27 with three fours and five sixes of his own. Washington Sundar pitched in 55 off 32.

DC scrambled to 209 for 8. Twenty overs chasing that monster total. KL Rahul hung tough—92 off 52, eleven fours, four sixes—backed by Pathum Nissanka's 41 off 24 and David Miller's unbeaten 41 off 20. Mukesh Kumar snared 2 for 55. Lungi Ngidi got 1 for 24. Kuldeep Yadav picked up 1 for 42. Rashid Khan's 3 for 17 shone bright. Prasidh Krishna added 2 for 52. Wasn't quite enough for GT. They'd dropped a six-run loss to Rajasthan Royals before this. DC had chased down Mumbai Indians in six wickets.

GT's middle order drew heat—no wins in two. Gill back. Sai Sudharsan feeling good. That lifted them into the clash. DC banked on Sameer Rizvi's middle-order sparks for the perfect streak. Mitchell Starc's sidelined injured till at least April 20.

Lucknow Super Giants nicked a three-wicket thriller over Kolkata Knight Riders. Right on the final ball at Eden Gardens. They chased 182, coasting at 181/4 before the drama kicked in.

Cameron Green chipped in with 32* off 24 balls—three fours, a six—during KKR's innings. But he bled 28 runs in his penultimate over. Ended up at 14 an over overall. Figures of 2/28.

Mukul Choudhary hammered 30 off the last two overs. Sealed it for LSG. They finished 182/7. KKR's third loss now. Death bowling's coming back to bite them hard.

Green back bowling since the T20 World Cup. Didn't go to plan in the clutch. LSG dragged themselves out of a hole.

Xavier Bartlett made Eden Gardens his playground. The Punjab Kings pacer shredded through KKR's top order on that green-tinged pitch, grabbing Finn Allen and Cameron Green with test-match lengths—two wickets in just 1.4 overs. KKR chose to bat first under gloomy skies, but they crashed to 25/2. Then heavy rain hit after 3.4 overs. No result. Crucial IPL 2026 points gone.

KKR's hurting bad now. They're winless, coming off a 65-run hiding from SRH and a 3-wicket loss to LSG. Rinku Singh's batting at No. 6 as vice-captain, carrying the load without injured spinners Varun Chakravarthy and Sunil Narine. Harshit Rana and Akash Deep are out too. Cameron Green's back's sore—he's batting only.

Shreyas Iyer's PBKS sits pretty. Two wins in a row, like that 5-wicket chase of CSK's 209. His leadership—straight after KKR's 2024 title—keeps PBKS sharp and together. KKR? Pace attack's a mess, middle order crumbling. Eden's drenched. Rescheduling can't come soon enough.

Sunrisers Hyderabad could file a formal complaint with the BCCI. That's over Lucknow Super Giants quick Avesh Khan supposedly swatting the ball back with his bat near the rope on the last ball of their game. SRH insists it hadn't crossed the boundary. Runs lost there. Might've pushed their 156/9 total higher—LSG nicked a five-wicket win chasing 160 anyway.

Avesh ended up with 2/36. Controversy's bubbling, though, after SRH's close loss. Rishabh Pant's unbeaten 68 sealed it. Pat Cummins, the captain, is out till April 17 for back scans. Ishan Kishan steps in to lead a side already hit by early blows.