Harpreet Brar has lived through almost everything Punjab Kings have thrown at the wall. A rebrand. Seven captains. Endless churn. No title.
Through all of it, one thing has barely moved: the tall left-arm spinner from Moga, quietly wheeling away since 2019. He has completed only two full seasons in seven years, yet no PBKS spinner has taken more wickets than him in that time. In a franchise addicted to change, Brar has become the unlikely constant.
The night that won’t go away
Ask any casual IPL watcher about Harpreet Brar and one image usually surfaces. RCB. Ahmedabad. A young, relatively unknown spinner ripping through a superstar top order.
- Virat Kohli.
- Glenn Maxwell.
- AB de Villiers.
Kohli and Maxwell fell off successive deliveries, de Villiers followed soon after. A triple-strike that turned a game, and almost overnight, a career. The memory trails him everywhere.
“Yes, they asked me in another interview ten minutes ago,” he laughs now.
Maxwell has fallen to him three more times in the IPL, Kohli once again. The list of batters in his pocket is long and glittering – Rohit Sharma at one end, domestic names like Vaibhav Sooryavanshi at the other. Yet for Brar, one missing name gnaws at him.
“After Virat paaji, there’s no batsman whose aura is such that their wicket can be remembered,” he told Cricbuzz. “But still, I haven’t yet dismissed Shubman Gill in the IPL… mostly everyone else.”
He pauses, then adds the one target he has circled.
“I would definitely like to take Gill’s wicket in my career. But for the last 3-4 years, whenever there’s a match against him, I am not playing.”
And that, really, is the heart of his story right now.
A bowler built for a format that won’t pick him
The last two seasons have left Brar watching more than bowling. In IPL 2026, he played just twice – one game in April, one in May.
In Jaipur, he went 0 for 25 in four overs in a 222 vs 228 run-fest against Rajasthan Royals, a tidy spell on a night when almost everyone bled. Against RCB, he returned 2 for 35, removing Jacob Bethell and Devdutt Padikkal – half the wickets to fall in another 222 total.
On numbers alone, that should have earned him a longer run in a season where bowlers routinely disappeared into the stands. On reputation too: this is a proven IPL operator, not a rookie trial.
But the league has changed around him.
The Impact Player rule has carved out the role he once filled so neatly. Earlier, Brar was the classic T20 package for a captain: a specialist spinner who could bat at No. 7, offer balance, and let the side lengthen both skills. Now, his batting has been pushed into irrelevance. Match-ups dictate selection. On flat tracks, teams lean towards extra batting or an additional quick. A bowler who bats a bit is suddenly less valuable than a batter who might bowl one over.
“Sir, main na sirf kaam hi kar sakta hu (I can only work on things),” he says when asked what he’s been doing with his batting. The reality, he knows, is structural.
“The way cricket is going on now, there is the Impact Player (rule), because of which I have gone down one spot further. If I play, there’s only Arshdeep (Singh) and Yuzipaaji (Chahal) after me. Because Marco Jansen also bats. Even if Azmatullah (Omarzai) plays, he will go above me.
“But in the future, whenever the Impact Player rule stops, and I wish it happens… because if our batting comes first, I will not be in the team. If bowling comes, I will be in the team. If the total is more, the pacer plays. This is how it is.”
That is the modern IPL in a sentence: a tactical puzzle that can leave solid cricketers stuck on the wrong side of the equation.
A rule under fire, and a spinner squeezed out
Brar is not alone in his frustration. The Impact Player clause surfaced at the Captains’ Meeting before the 2026 season. Several senior players have publicly questioned it. Franchises will be asked for feedback. Early signals suggest the rule will survive for at least one more year.
For Brar, that’s another season of uncertainty.
“Personally, Impact Player is not good for me because I want to play all games,” he says plainly. “Every player wants to play more. So yeah, I have been working on my batting – I have been doing that for eight years. But I am not getting enough chances.”
His challenge is compounded by how Punjab Kings use spin. This year, they bowled the lowest percentage of spin overs in the league – just 18.7% – and took the fewest wickets with spin, only 14. It’s their joint-lowest spin return in a season. The contrast is stark: in 2014 and 2025, the two years they reached the final, spin delivered its highest share of their wickets (33% and 32%).
Chahal is the lead act. Beyond him, the cupboard has often looked bare. Brar has felt the squeeze.
A career that refuses to stand still
Yet outside the IPL glare, his numbers tell a different story. Since 2023, no spinner has taken more wickets in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. He has also stepped away from the “white-ball specialist” tag, playing Ranji Trophy for the first time last season.
The irony is cruel: his lack of IPL game time has meant long stretches without competitive cricket. He has not played any professional match since May.
Last month, PBKS brought him into an off-season camp with five others. No crowds, no cameras, just time. Strength and conditioning, assistant coaches, technical deep dives.
“I worked on plenty of things in detail,” he says. “How can I get better… how can I bowl better?”
The hurt is still there, though.
“When you do well for your team, and suddenly, you are not in the first XI for the next game. Dukh lagta hai (it hurts) but as a cricketer, team always comes first, which is our motto. We must go as per the demands of the team. But it doesn't mean that if I am not playing, I’ll just sit and feel low.”
He leans heavily on the men in charge – captain Shreyas Iyer and head coach Ricky Ponting.
“They are very similar kinds of people. And they are very practical people,” Brar says. “If I have a question in mind, I will go and ask them. They will always answer it in the right manner.”
He makes a point of catching them when they’re alone, asking about their own journeys, their failures, their selection calls. He is not afraid to ask the awkward question: why am I not playing, and what must I do to change that?
Chasing cricket, wherever it is
If the IPL won’t give him overs, he will find them elsewhere. The hunt for game time now stretches across continents.
His wife works as a doctor in the United Kingdom, so the couple naturally spends time there after the IPL. Brar, though, rarely treats it as a pure holiday. If there’s a club game somewhere, he wants in.
This year, he turned out in club cricket in England once the IPL ended. The reasoning is brutally simple: any chance to bowl, he takes.
“Even when you go for some free time after the IPL, say for a vacation… even if matches are on the weekend, I want to play and stay associated with the game whenever I have free time,” he says.
Last year, that same restlessness took him even closer to the highest level. During India’s Test tour of England, he was in Birmingham when the national side was training. He had Shubman Gill’s number. He had his kit. That was enough.
“He said, ‘Yes, you can come,’” Brar recalls. “So, I managed to practice with the team. I think Shubman himself didn't come that day. It was optional practice. But I practiced with the rest and really liked it. Also, it’s always great to meet your own people on foreign soil!”
It was just a net, just a practice day, but for a player on the fringes, those sessions matter. They plant an idea: maybe this level isn’t that far away.
The red-ball pivot
For now, his reality is more modest and more immediate. He is back in Punjab, playing the state T20 league, dusting off his white-ball skills after a brief flirtation with the red ball. The bigger examination waits a little further down the road.
A second Ranji Trophy season. Another chance to stretch his career beyond the Impact Player era, to prove he is more than a T20 matchup piece.
His first red-ball campaign in 2025/26 could hardly have gone better. He took 23 wickets at 21.26, the highest tally for Punjab. He added a few more big names to his scrapbook too. KL Rahul, in particular, will remember the delivery that ripped past his defence and crashed into middle stump.
“Personally, I feel I can play Test cricket for India,” Brar says. “And for that, I am willing to put in all the hard work needed and will even exceed that in the future.”
A left-arm spinner who has outbowled most in domestic T20s, who has already hurt some of the best batters in the world, now talks about Test whites and long spells. In an IPL shaped by substitutions and short-term fixes, Harpreet Brar is betting on something unfashionable.
Time in the middle. Overs in his legs. And the belief that one day, he won’t be asking to join India’s nets in Birmingham – he’ll be part of the squad walking out at Lord’s.
