Lions have been shown the door in this edition, but for Kings XI Punjab they have all to play for if they want to make the cut. With Marcus Stoinis set to miss the game it is bound to hurt KXIP. KXIP would be hoping Amla, Maxwell, Miller, the international stars come to the party in the crucial encounter. The teams have met three times, with Kings XI winning twice and Lions once. Encouragingly for Lions, the away team has won each time.
Brendon McCullum has been ruled out of the rest of the season with a hamstring strain. So that will act as a massive jolt to the Lions hopes.
A half-century from Hashim Amla and Axar Patel’s all-round efforts helped Kings XI Punjab pull off their first away win of the season.
Jadeja will have to play a big role with the bat and the ball McCullum’s absence. Hashim Amla and David Miller could leave the IPL after Sunday’s game, to join their South Africa team-mates on their tour of England, so they would be desperate to seal their playoff berth.
The match will be played at Mohali, and it is the second of the double-header Sunday.
The likely XIs
Kings XI Punjab: 1 Hashim Amla, 2 Martin Guptill, 3 Shaun Marsh, 4 Manan Vohra, 5 Wriddhiman Saha (wk), 6 Glenn Maxwell (capt), 7 Axar Patel, 8 Mohit Sharma, 9 Varun Aaron, 10 Sandeep Sharma, 11 T Natarajan.
Gujarat Lions: 1 Dwayne Smith, 2 Ishan Kishan, 3 Suresh Raina (capt), 4 Dinesh Karthik (wk), 5 Aaron Finch, 6 Akshdeep Nath/Irfan Pathan, 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 James Faulkner, 9 Pradeep Sangwan, 10 Basil Thampi, 11 Ankit Soni.
