Peshawar Zalmi grabbed their PSL 2026 stranglehold tighter. They smashed 196/6, then bowlers choked Multan Sultans' reply dead. Sultans faced 51 needed off five overs last up—didn't get close. Twenty-four run win. Zalmi's now got five from six, tops the table by three points. Title talk's buzzing.

That defense? Turned Sultans' chase into a total crumble. Pressure moments exposed their top order, but Zalmi's attack just kept swinging. Bowling depth shone through when it counted most. Sultans folded from 146/4.

Zalmi's rolling now. Playoffs in sight. Sultans? Picking up the pieces after that hiding.

England quick Brydon Carse won't play IPL 2026 for Sunrisers Hyderabad. He hurt his right hand in training. That's the second season running he's pulled out without a single game—last year it was a toe injury.

SRH can't catch a break with injuries. Left-armer David Payne, who'd come in for Jack Edwards, twisted his ankle and he's done for the season. Two games. Two wickets. Pat Cummins, SRH skipper, gets back April 25 against Rajasthan Royals. Cleared back scans down in Sydney. Lumbar bone stress reaction sidelined him to one match since last July.

SRH still hammered Rajasthan Royals by 57 runs at Uppal. Batted first for 216/6. Bowled 'em out for 159. Cummins stepping up now might just shore up that pace battery as they keep grinding.

Look, here's the thing—Mitchell Starc's cleared by Cricket Australia. Elbow and shoulder injuries from Ashes and Big Bash behind him. The 36-year-old lands with Delhi Capitals for IPL 2026. Eyes debut May 1 against Rajasthan Royals.

He took 14 wickets in 11 games for DC last season. Recovered fully now. Joins fellow Aussies Josh Hazlewood at RCB and Pat Cummins at SRH inbound too. DC lost by 47 runs to SRH last outing—195 for nine chasing 243.

Sanju Samson smashed an unbeaten 115 off 56 balls—15 fours, four sixes—to haul CSK to 212 for 2. That set up a 23-run win over DC right there at Chepauk. He'd timed it so calmly, finally busting CSK's home jinx. Coach Eric Simons couldn't help drawing MS Dhoni parallels.

After a rocky start to the season, Samson put it down to self-belief. He anchored the innings just right. DC? They scrambled to 189 all out chasing on that batting beauty. Nowhere near enough.

CSK's first win. Gaikwad's leading in this post-Dhoni captaincy stretch, Dhoni finishing things off. Hopes alive again.

Rohit Sharma's IPL 2026 got off to a rough start. He retired hurt on 19 off 13 balls in Mumbai Indians' clash with Royal Challengers Bengaluru at Wankhede—hamstring issue suspected, scans pending to gauge how bad. That puts his spot in MI's next outing against Punjab Kings on April 16 up in the air.

Phil Salt, RCB's opener, just shut down the noise about his shaky run. Blasted 78 off 36 balls to win the match, snagged Player of the Match in that nail-biter. "Impact matters more than consistent big scores every game," he said afterward, shrugging off the weight of milestones. Down-to-earth stuff from the keeper-batter who's now lighting it up for RCB with Jitesh Sharma, Tim David, and Suyash Sharma.

Tim David added his own twist to RCB's 18-run win. Umpires nailed him with a 25% match fee fine plus one demerit point. Level 1 Code of Conduct breach—he ignored their ball-change calls twice in the 18th over.

Punjab Kings nicked a pulsating 6-wicket chase against Sunrisers Hyderabad right there at Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium. SRH's openers Abhishek Sharma, blasting 74 off 28 balls, and Travis Head, 38 off 23, tore into the powerplay for 105 runs—looked like 250 was on. Shreyas Iyer, though, pulled a clever trick. Part-timer Shashank Singh.

He clocked 120kph with cutters in that key over. Ended up 3-20-2. SRH stopped at 219/6. Arshdeep Singh chipped in 4-50-2.

PBKS openers Priyansh Arya (57 off 20) and Prabhsimran Singh (51 off 25) rattled up 99 in reply. Iyer's unbeaten 69 off 33 got them over the line in 18.5 overs. Follows their rain-washed no-result with KKR.

SRH now two losses deep. They fell 5 wickets short to LSG last time, scraping 156/9.

BCCI's shaking things up for IPL 2026. They've flipped the venues on CSK vs GT clashes because of Gujarat's municipal elections hitting April 26. That afternoon game? Now it's off to Chennai. The May 21 night slot moves to Ahmedabad instead. Calendar's otherwise untouched.

CSK couldn't be riding higher after those straight Chepauk wins—like the 32-run thumping of KKR while guarding 192/5. GT hit back quick enough, though. Seven-wicket canter past LSG. Now these venue switches hand CSK a spin-happy home pitch right off the bat. Points table just got a bit more interesting.

Rajasthan Royals manager Romi Bhinder's in hot water—a show-cause notice from BCCI's ACSU after he pulled out his phone in the dugout during that RCB match. Broke PMOA rules flat out. Those ban devices to stop any whiff of unfair edges. He's sent over an apology, backed by medical records on lung troubles and other health woes.

No bad intent here, sources reckon. Light slap on the wrist, probably. All this amid RR's 57-run drubbing by Sunrisers Hyderabad at Uppal. They crumbled to 159 chasing 217. Bit of backstory: Vaibhav Suryavanshi had peeked at a screen before, went viral. Probe's zeroed in on the rule violation, though.

RR just wants it forgotten fast. Turnaround on the points table awaits.

Zimbabwe's women head to Pakistan for the very first time. Their six-match white-ball series starts May 3—three ODIs under the ICC Women's Championship—then three T20Is from May 12. Every match unfolds at National Bank Stadium in Karachi.

Pakistan's sticky humidity awaits in Karachi. That sets things up nicely for the T20 World Cup down the line. First bilateral tour between the women's sides. They're building some real momentum before the big global event.

Zimbabwe wants to etch their name in the history books. Expect a proper scrap out there. Landmark trip.

Lucknow Super Giants nicked a last-ball three-wicket thriller over Kolkata Knight Riders at Eden Gardens. Chasing 182, they had Mukul Choudhary to thank—his unbeaten 54 off 27 balls, packed with seven sixes and that helicopter flick he loves. LSG were down at 128/7, still needing 54 from 24 balls. Somehow, they pulled it off.

Ayush Badoni got them going first, 54 off 34 with seven fours and a couple of sixes. But Choudhary? Kid's a Dhoni fan from way back. Practices the helicopter every day, smacking 100-150 sixes in the nets. Deep breaths between those massive hits. Faced 25 of the last 30 balls. Vaibhav Arora went hard with 4-38-2, Anukul Roy matched him at 4-32-2. Sunil Narine kept it tight, 4-13-1. Didn't matter. Earlier, Ajinkya Rahane cracked 41 off 24—four fours, two sixes—while Ajinkhav Raghuvanshi chipped in 45 from 33, five fours and a pair of sixes. KKR posted 181/4.

Choudhary's feat puts him alongside Kieron Pollard—only two with a fifty-plus in death overs during a winning IPL chase. LSG now on back-to-back triumphs after SRH. They're climbing. KKR? Stuck ruing that washout versus PBKS.

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.

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.

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.