Punjab Kings chose to bowl vs Mumbai Indians

Mumbai Indians brought back old faithful Quinton de Kock as Rohit Sharma missed out with what looked like a hamstring injury that he sustained during their previous match against Royal Challengers Bengaluru. MI captain Hardik Pandya said they were going to assess him in a couple of games’ time. They also lost the toss, and the unbeaten Punjab Kings captain Shreyas Iyer had no hesitation choosing to bowl at the chase-friendly Wankhede Stadium.

MI had other availability issues as left-arm spinner Mitchell Santner missed out with illness, making the overseas player switch easier. They replaced Santner with debutant offspin allrounder Mayank Rawat from Delhi. Rawat’s batting strike rate in 11 matches was 123, and he had bowled less than one-and-a-half over per match for Delhi.

Also missing from the MI line-up and the bench was left-arm quick Trent Boult. Sherfane Rutherford made it into the starting XI with AM Ghazanfar likely to come in as Impact Player when it is time for MI to defend their total.

Like winning teams do, PBKS stuck with their successful combination. A win tonight will take them to the top of the points table.

Mumbai Indians 1 Quinton de Kock (wk), 2 Ryan Rickelton, 3 Tilak Varma, 4 Suryakumar Yadav, 5 Hardik Pandya (capt.), 6 Sherfane Rutherford, 7 Naman Dhir, 8 Mayank Rawat, 9 Shardul Thakur, 10 Deepak Chahar, 11 Jasprit Bumrah

MI bench: AM Ghazanfar, Corbin Bosch, Raj Bawa, Robin Minz, Ashwani Kumar

Punjab Kings 1 Priyansh Arya, 2 Prabhsimran Singh (wk), 3 Cooper Connolly, 4 Shreyas Iyer (capt.), 5 Shashank Singh, 6 Marcus Stoinis, 7 Marco Jansen, 8 Xavier Bartlett, 9 Vijaykumar Vyshak, 10 Arshdeep Singh, 11 Yuzvendra Chahal

PBKS bench: Nehal Wadhera, Vishnu Vinod, Harpreet Brar, Suyansh Shedge, Yash Thakur