PBKS’ captain Shreyas Iyer won the toss and chose to bat against his former team, KKR, in their match. The two previous matches at Mullanpur during this IPL have included high scores of over 200 runs and successful defenses. According to Iyer, the choice to bat first was made despite the dew factor due to the pattern of teams winning while batting first.
Caps were distributed to both teams. Anrich Nortje made his first appearance for KKR, taking the place of Moeen Ali. It was evident that KKR aimed to utilize their fast bowlers against a team whose Indian batsmen had been performing strongly.
In place of the injured Lockie Ferguson, PBKS gave a debut opportunity to Australia’s pace bowler Xavier Bartlett, who brings some batting skills to their lower order. They have also strengthened their batting with Josh Inglis joining their primarily Indian lineup. Consequently, Marcus Stoinis was benched. As for their bowling strategy in the second innings, PBKS is expected to utilize Yash Thakur. KKR has Angkrish Raghuvanshi as an extra batsman among their substitutes.
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The match was predicted to be an emotional one for Shreyas, who had captained KKR to victory in the previous year. However, he was not kept on by the team and they were forced to search for a new captain after the auction.
The Punjab Kings lineup consists of Prabhsimran Singh (wk), Priyansh Arya, Shreyas Iyer (capt.), Josh Inglis (wk), Nehal Wadhera, Shashank Singh, Glenn Maxwell, Marco Jansen, Xavier Bartlett, Yuzvendra Chahal, and Arshdeep Singh.
The bench for PBKS includes V Vyshak, Suryansh Shedge, Yash Thakur, Harpreet Brar and Pravin Dubey.
The Kolkata Knight Riders includes Quinton de Kock as their wicketkeeper, followed by Sunil Narine, Ajinkya Rahane as captain, Rinku Singh, Venkatesh Iyer, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Anrich Nortje, Harshit Rana, Vaibhav Arora and Varun Chakravarthy.
KKR has benched Manish Pandey, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Anukul Roy, Rovman Powell, and Luvnith Sisodia.
