Sam Curran, leading the Punjab Kings in the absence of injured skipper Shikhar Dhawan, won the toss and elected to bowl first against the Mumbai Indians in the 33rd match of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024, played Thursday at the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium.
Curran is taking the captaincy reins after Dhawan suffered an injury during the ongoing IPL season. The Punjab Kings are looking to bounce back from a narrow three-wicket defeat to the Rajasthan Royals in their previous outing. Currently, they sit eighth in the standings with four points and a net run rate of -0.218.
Mumbai Indians, under the leadership of Hardik Pandya, are also struggling, occupying ninth place with four points and a similar net run rate. They come into the match after a disappointing 20-run loss against the Chennai Super Kings.
At the toss, Curran announced Rilee Rossouw would replace Jonny Bairstow in the starting lineup, while Adil Taide misses out due to tactical changes.
"We will have a bowl. Keeping up with the trend of the tournament," Curran said. "Shikhar is not well, so that's the only injury and Rilee comes in for Jonny today. It is not nice to lose the close games but we are doing a lot of things right. Taide drops out of the side, just a couple of tactical changes."
Pandya, meanwhile, emphasized the importance of commitment from all players.
"We were wanting to bat first as well, so good toss to lose," Pandya said. "We don't judge (our performances), couple of times we had the game in our grasp and didn't finish the game, IPL tests you, when the game is not over it is not over. We just take it game by game, go out there and give our 100 percent. Every individual should commit to the team's goal and once we do that, the results will be seen. Same team," he added.
Playing XIs:
Punjab Kings: Rilee Rossouw, Prabhsimran Singh, Sam Curran (C), Jitesh Sharma (Wk), Liam Livingstone, Shashank Singh, Ashutosh Sharma, Harpreet Brar, Harshal Patel, Kagiso Rabada, Arshdeep Singh.
Mumbai Indians: Rohit Sharma, Ishan Kishan (Wk), Suryakumar Yadav, Tilak Varma, Hardik Pandya (C), Tim David, Romario Shepherd, Mohammad Nabi, Gerald Coetzee, Shreyas Gopal, Jasprit Bumrah.
