After struggling with its bowling in the first half of the tournament, Kings XI Punjab bowlers led by pacer Sandeep Sharma have delivered in the last two games to get the side back in contention for the playoffs.
Over the next three days, Punjab will return home one last time, for two back-to-back games and would like to bag all four points on offer. First up will be an easier encounter against a deflated Gujarat Lions on Sunday before taking on Kolkata Knight Riders on Tuesday.
Following his four-wicket haul against Delhi, Sandeep Sharma once again delivered for Punjab as he scalped the big three of RCB (Chris Gayle, Virat Kohli, A.B. de Villiers) in the PowerPlay.
Sandeep’s strength lies in his ability to swing the ball and he used that to good effect on Friday. After being hit for a four and a six, Sandeep, whose main weapon is his inswinger, bowled one that left the right-hander and a charging de Villiers could only nick it to the keeper.
Punjab allrounder Axar Patel gave some insights into Sandeep’s mindset. Axar said: “His strength is that he can swing the ball. So he knows when he can get it to swing, it gets difficult for the batsmen.”
- Kings XI Punjab: Glenn Maxwell (C), David Miller, Manan Vohra, Hashim Amla, Shaun Marsh, Darren Sammy, Wriddhiman Saha, Nikhil Naik, Ishant Sharma, 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.
- Gujarat Lions: Suresh Raina (C), Akshadeep Nath, Basil Thampi, Shubham Agarwal, Dwayne Smith, Chirag Suri, James Faulkner, Aaron Finch, Manpreet Gony, Ishan Kishan, Ravindra Jadeja, Shadab Jakati, Dinesh Karthik, Dhaval Kulkarni, Praveen Kumar, Brandon McCullum, Pradeep Sangwan, Jason Roy, Jaydev Shah, Shelly Shaurya, Nathusingh, Tejas Baroka and Andrew Tye.
- Match starts at 8pm.
“Take any format, when the ball swings, batsmen find it difficult. His mindset is simple, if the ball swings then ‘I can show my capabilities’,” added Axar.
Punjab has won three of its last four matches and is fifth in the points table with 10 points from as many matches and can’t afford any more slip ups.
Ineffective bowlers
Gujarat, on the other hand will be trying to recover from Rishabh Pant and Sanju Samson’s onslaught a couple of days ago.
Like Punjab, Gujarat’s main problem has been with its bowling unit. The team has not managed to defend a score even once this year and has used as many as 18 bowlers over the course of the tournament.
When asked about his team’s stakes in the tournament, assistant coach Mohammad Kaif said it gave the team an opportunity to give chances to some of the players who don’t play regularly. Kaif added, “we are professionals who get paid to do a job. Next year there will be fresh auction and the players would want to do well. The table does not matter and we want to finish with a few wins.”
It did not help that the team could not play its star all-rounder Dwayne Bravo, who was the leading wicket-taker in the last edition.
Kaif conceded that Bravo’s absence and the uncertainty around his fitness made a big difference. He said, “We always try to accommodate an allrounder in the first XI as it always helps the team. The uncertainty regarding Bravo’s fitness did not help either. We thought he could play in the latter part but he did not feel better. Had we known it earlier, maybe we could have found a suitable replacement.”