It’s a homecoming for Ravi Ashwin as the Punjab team led by him will take on the Chennai Super Kings in Chennai.
Since both Dhoni and Ashwin know the pitch very well, it will be a great contest. The first match in Chennai which saw RCB being destroyed for a tiny total and even CSK found it difficult to chase it though they finally prevailed. Now, it will be interesting to see how things work here.
Since there will be assistance to spinners, we might see Punjab going in with an extra spinner. To their advantage, they have Murugan Ashwin and Varun Chakravarthy who have a lot of experience playing at their home venue. On the other hand, CSK will depend more on Tahir, Jadeja with Chahar giving them the early breakthrough.
Still, there is no proper news about Gayle’s availability. For CSK, with no Bravo, we might see Scott Kuggeleijn play today or considering the track, CSK might stick with Mitchell Santner.
Also, either a change in batting position for Rayudu or he might well be replaced today.
In the last match, Sam Curran turned the innings with the ball and KXIP needs that badly considering the deep batting order of CSK.
For CSK, they will be hoping for a better performance at the death overs which caused them the match the other night.
CSK Probable XI: Ambati Rayudu/ Murali Vijay, Shane Watson, Suresh Raina, Kedar Jadhav, MS Dhoni (c, wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Mitchell Santner/Scott Kuggeleijn, Deepak Chahar, Shardul Thakur/Mohit Sharma, Harbhajan Singh, Imran Tahir
KXIP Probable XI: KL Rahul (wk), Chris Gayle, Mayank Agarwal, Sarfaraz Khan, David Miller, Mandeep Singh, Sam Curran, R Ashwin (c), M Ashwin, Mohammed Shami, Mujeeb ur Rahman
Sanjay Manjrekar reacts after being removed from BCCI commentary panel