Toss: Kings XI Punjab chose to bowl v Rajasthan Royals
© BCCI
Considering no team has won defending a total at the Holkar Stadium in the IPL since last year, Kings XI Punjab captain R Ashwin won an important toss and chose to bowl first against Rajasthan Royals.
Kings XI made one change to the side that was beaten by Mumbai Indians in the previous game. Yuvraj Singh was dropped again, for Manoj Tiwary. Yuvraj has scored 64 runs in seven games this season, at an average of 12.80. “The wicket wasn’t as good we were expecting it to be in the last game; 175-180 was par, today will be no different,” Ashwin said at the toss.
Royals, too, made just one change: bringing in debutant Anureet Singh for Dhawal Kulkarni in a like-for-like replacement.
Royals, currently languishing at the bottom of the points table, need to beat Kings XI, fourth on the table, to stay relevant in the race for the playoffs.
Kings XI Punjab: 1 Chris Gayle, 2 KL Rahul (wk), 3 Mayank Agarwal, 4 Manoj Tiwary, 5 Karun Nair, 6 Marcus Stoinis, 7 Axar Patel, 8 R Ashwin (capt), 9 Andrew Tye, 10 Mujeeb Ur Rahman, 11 Ankit Rajpoot
Rajasthan Royals: 1 D’Arcy Short, 2 Ajinkya Rahane (capt), 3 Sanju Samson, 4 Ben Stokes, 5 Jos Buttler (wk), 6 Rahul Tripathi, 7 K Gowtham, 8 Jofra Archer, 9 Shreyas Gopal, 10 Jaydev Unadkat, 11 Anureet Singh
Nikhil Kalro is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo
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Source: ESPN Crickinfo