"Sticking to the basics". It's a line players often reach for when asked to explain a day when things fall into place. Arshdeep Singh leaned on it too after his three-for against Mumbai Indians (MI) on Thursday night in Mumbai.
The weeks leading into this game had not been tidy. Arshdeep arrived with just two wickets in four IPL 2026 matches, an economy of 10.64, and ten successive IPL games, stretching back to last season, without a powerplay wicket. Since IPL 2024, he had bowled more deliveries outside off stump than anyone (118), and conceded the most wides (58). In the four games prior to this, his intention to stay away from the arc was evident but his execution was not always on point. He had sent down a total of 16 wides already.
There were passages where it unravelled quickly. Against Sunrisers Hyderabad, after being struck for two boundaries in his second over, he followed up with four wides, the over eventually costing 24 runs. In the match against Gujarat Titans, four of his seven wides arrived in the final over. He acknowledged it himself after Punjab Kings' (PBKS) match against MI, admitting that the ball simply had not been coming out of his hand as he would like it to.
"It goes back to having a chat with Ricky [Ponting, PBKS head coach] in one of the training sessions," he said at the post-match presentation. "I told him I wasn't feeling the way I should feel, the ball is not coming out of my hand really well and [I] had a nice pep talk with him. [The conversation was about] just how I can keep myself fresh mentally and how I was just expecting too much out of myself and not letting things to be simple and just going by the flow.
"He told me you're coming off a high, winning a World Cup and it's not easy to maintain that high all the time, so you've just got to stick to the basics and have fun. That's the most important part of the game. Just enjoy it and stick to your basics."
And now, he is back to his basics: conventional swing and yorkers, two of the things he is known for. In the first over against MI, he found immediate purchase, landing the ball repeatedly on a probing length just outside off, beating Ryan Rickelton three times with the ball shaping away late. Even when Rickelton made contact, it was tentative. Five dots built a quiet squeeze and hinted at rhythm, something that had been missing this season for Arshdeep.
When he returned in the third over, the breakthrough came via a variation, a scrambled-seam delivery drifting towards leg. Rickelton, probably nudged by the pressure, went through with the stroke and picked out deep backward square. It wasn't a classic dismissal, but it mattered because it Arshdeep finally had a powerplay wicket, and it was his 100th in the IPL.
"That [scrambled seam] is the ball I've been trying to work on," Arshdeep said. "So [Mohammed] Siraj got a lot of wickets with the scramble seam. [It's] still not there yet but still trying to learn it as much as I can as a variation. The seam was coming out really nice. I just wanted to change it a bit. It wasn't the way I wanted to get him out but as a bowler in T20, you should take whatever comes your way and just enjoy it."
What followed was more keeping with his reputation: an outswinger to Suryakumar Yadav with short cover and extra cover in place. He drew Suryakumar into a false shot, having him edge to short third. And with that, Arshdeep's hands-spread-wide celebration returned. The hat-trick didn't come, but the hat-trick ball was impressive too: an inswinger which Naman Dhir worked to midwicket.
At the death, Arshdeep went back to his other calling card. He went around the wicket to Quinton de Kock and ended up bowling two full tosses but a mid-pitch chat with Marco Jansen, who had bowled a couple of tailing yorkers the previous over, seemed to reset the plan. He went over the wicket and nailed the sequence: a tailing yorker, a wide yorker, and then a 136kph yorker that curved in to dismantle Sherfane Rutherford's stumps.
The success against MI was not just an in-game correction, and it was also more than just a mindset shift. On the eve of the match, Arshdeep had immersed himself in spot bowling, focusing on repeatedly pitching the ball on a good length and angling it across the batter for 45 minutes. He then placed his shoes as markers in front of off stump and leg stump, using them as visual targets to sharpen his angles. He admitted that it brought back a sense of reassurance that had been missing.
"Even yesterday I came for training and I had a nice spot-bowling session and that was the time when I felt like the ball is coming out really nicely out of my hand," Arshdeep said. "And the result was in front of you guys today, the ball was seaming a bit, the ball was swinging, and the control was there."
At this very venue three years ago, he had taken a four-for against MI to bring up his 50th IPL wicket. This time, as he reached the 100-wicket milestone, there was a sense of symmetry about it all. Another landmark at the same ground, achieved by returning to the skills that have defined him.
For someone as savvy on social media as Arshdeep, "basic" might not quite mean what it does to others. On the field, though, he's happy to stick to it if it brings results. Even on a day when he won the match for his team, his mind was on the reels he would be making. "I love the support and a lot of credit goes to my social media," he said when asked about the Mumbai crowd on the day. "I love making reels and I love posting on social media. So a lot of them know me [for] reels. I love it and I'll keep doing that for them. You'll see a lot of reels coming."
