There’s a new No. 1 on the Orange Cap table, and a clear leader on the Purple Cap table at IPL 2026 at the end of the Gujarat Titans (GT) vs Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) game on Friday night in Ahmedabad, which went GT’s way.
Almost out of nowhere, despite missing a match, Shubman Gill has climbed to the top of the run-scorers’ table.
On Friday, he scored 86 in 50 balls, winning the Player-of-the-Match award as GT overtook their 181-run target with two balls in hand, and that took him to 251 runs for the season, and 23 runs clear of second-placed Virat Kohli of Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB).
Gill now has three half-centuries in a row, and an overall sequence of 39, 70, 56 and 86. The strike rate is a touch below ideal, at 154.93, but that’s true of all the top three on the table. Kohli is going at 158.33. Heinrich Klaasen of Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), at No. 3, is scoring at 142.67.
For runs+speed, we need to come to No. 4, where RCB’s Rajat Patidar has 222 runs at 213.46, followed by SRH’s Ishan Kishan, whose 213 runs have come at 190.17.
The Punjab Kings (PBKS) duo of Prabhsimran Singh (211) and Shreyas Iyer (203), GT’s Jos Buttler (201) and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi of Rajasthan Royals (RR) are the others in the 200-runs club at the moment.
Gill’s strike bowler and winner of the Purple Cap from IPL 2025, Prasidh Krishna, now has 11 wickets from five bowling innings, and is the leader of the pack, following his 1 for 32 against KKR.
Behind him, Anshul Kamboj of Chennai Super Kings (CSK) has ten wickets, followed by Prince Yadav of Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) and RR’s Ravi Bishnoi with nine each, and then five bowlers with seven wickets apiece: RR’s Jofra Archer, RCB’s Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Krunal Pandya, KKR’s Vaibhav Arora, and, after his three wickets on Friday, GT’s Kagiso Rabada.
