Australian skipper Steven Smith is in phenomenal form in every format of the game, without barring the T20 format, he got a match-winning 84 in the first match of Rising Pune Supergiant against Royal Challengers Bangalore defeating them by seven wickets to win their opener. But, today they take on a team that has not played a single match in this edition of the Indian Premier League. With a new captain, will Glenn Maxwell prove to the game changer Punjab had been looking for years. Kings XI Punjab is one team that has never won the coveted trophy after nine attempts, so if there is a team that is extra motivated to win it has to be this franchisee.
This is going to be the first of the double header Saturday.
RPS on one hand will be brimming with confidence after their comprehensive victory in the their first game whereas for Maxwell it is a chance to get the composition right, early in the long tournament. But Punjab franchisee have a solid bunch of foreign players in David Miller, Eoin Morgan, Indian talent Manoj Tiwary. By the looks of it, it seems like a good unit but only time will tell if they can win it today.
The Punjab unit is also been training at the Holkar Stadium for about a week now and should be well-versed with the conditions, which will help.
Match time: 4:00 IST
Squads:
Rising Pune Supergiant: Steven Smith (captain), MS Dhoni, Ajinkya Rahane, Ben Stokes, Faf du Plessis, Usman Khawaja, Manoj Tiwary, Mayank Agarwal, Ankit Sharma, Baba Aparajith, Ankush Bains, Rajat Bhatia, Deepak Chahar, Rahul Chahar, Daniel Christian, Ashok Dinda, Lockie Ferguson, Jaskaran Singh, Saurabh Kumar, Milind Tandon, Jaydev Unadkat, Adam Zampa.
Kings XI Punjab: Glenn Maxwell (captain), David Miller, Manan Vohra, Shaun Marsh, Armaan Jaffer, Martin Guptill, Eoin Morgan, Rinku Singh, Sandeep Sharma, Arman Jaffer, Anureet Singh, Mohit Sharma, KC Cariappa, Pradeep Sahu, Swapnil Singh, T Natrajan, Matt Henry, Varun Aaron, Axar Patel, Marcus Stoinis, Gurkeerat Mann, Rahul Tewatia, Darren Sammy, Wriddhiman Saha, Nikhil Naik.
