IPL 2025, Qualifier 1 PBKS vs RCB IPL Live Updates, Punjab Kings vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru: PBKs face RCB on Thursday.

The New Punjab Cricket Association Stadium in Mullanpur, New Chandigarh has only been an IPL venue for two years, but already, it has the chance to host a set of playoff games after rescheduling took this game away from Hyderabad. It is a home game for Punjab Kings in some ways — but that might well be advantage RCB. Rajat Patidar’s team has done something which has never been done before in the IPL by winning every single away match they played this tournament. Their final league victory over Lucknow saw Jitesh Sharma play one of the best high-pressure knocks in the history of this tournament, sealing that crucial top two spot in the most dramatic of styles, and earn two tilts at the final. But this team will back themselves to only need one.

In their way will be the new-look, refurbished Punjab Kings of Shreyas Iyer and Ricky Ponting. The Iyer-Ponting axis know their way around reaching the IPL final, having done so with Delhi Capitals in 2020 — but Qualifier 1 is a match they have never cracked, losing to MI and CSK respectively in 2020 and 2021. But things can change: Iyer now has experience of not just winning but absolutely dominating in the playoffs, helping KKR brush aside SRH with some ferocity not once but twice in his title run last year. That sort of leadership experience is invaluable: pair that with a born winner in Australia’s most successful captain, and you get a team built for the big stage.

There isn’t much to separate these two teams on the pitch itself: they had identical points, 17 in the league stage, nearly identical net run-rate, and they split their two games this season when they played in quick succession in the middle of the tournament. This is a well-matched pair of teams, even if they are built in different ways, relying on impact and players up and down the team putting their hand up when it mattered most. In such a contest, it is often mistakes that come to define it rather than the successes. A dropped catch here, a miscommunication while running there, and the match will swing. For the neutral, that is exactly what you want a knockout cricket match to look like: no underdog, no favourite, just two quality units leaving it all out on the field.

And these are two teams that will certainly do that. Expect full effort, an entire commitment to the cause, and a desire to win stemming from two historic franchises that have never quite cracked the code. Today, one of those two teams will be one step closer to figuring it out. The only question that remains is which one.