7:27pm The umpires make their way out to the middle, followed by the RR fielders. It will be Taide opening the batting for the Punjab Kings, with Bairstow alongside him. The England batter could do with a few runs here. Boult, as usual, will take the new ball. This could be a key period in the game, especially if the ball moves around as it did on Tuesday. Taide on strike. One slip in place – here we go!
7:20pm Tonight is also a brilliant opportunity for Taide, who managed two fifties in seven innings in the IPL last year. In this season’s Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, he scored 302 runs in seven innings for Vidarbha – at a strike rate of 169.66. It will be interesting to see where he bats, though, with Prabhsimran also capable of opening the batting.
Shivang Madaan: “What are your thoughts on Sikander Raza being left out after not a bad game last time around?” — Think Raza going out has more to do with Livingstone being fit again. The other option could have been to exclude Bairstow but with Dhawan also missing, PBKS perhaps need a bit of experience at the top of the order.
7:10pm Plenty of changes to keep track of. RR will definitely miss Buttler and Ashwin. Powell, though, adds middle-order muscle while Kotian had an excellent Ranji Trophy campaign just before the IPL. The Kings, rather interestingly, have omitted Ashutosh, who struck the ball cleanly against the Titans and against SRH the other night. They could still bring him in as an Impact Player, but with PBKS batting first, it might require a collapse for that to happen.
Punjab Kings XI: Atharva Taide, Jonny Bairstow, Prabhsimran Singh, Sam Curran (c), Liam Livingstone, Shashank Singh, Jitesh Sharma (wk), Harpreet Brar, Harshal Patel, Kagiso Rabada, Arshdeep Singh
PBKS bench: Rahul Chahar, Ashutosh Sharma, Vidwath Kaverappa, Harpreet Bhatia, Nathan Ellis
Rajasthan Royals XI: Sanju Samson (c & wk), Riyan Parag, Rovman Powell, Shimron Hetmyer, Dhruv Jurel, Tanush Kotian, Trent Boult, Keshav Maharaj, Avesh Khan, Kuldeep Sen, Yuzvendra Chahal
RR bench: Yashasvi Jaiswal, Tom Kohler-Cadmore, Shubham Dubey, Navdeep Saini, Abid Mushtaq
7pm It’s toss time. Curran, the home captain, is stood there alongside Samson. Curran gives it a flick. Heads is the call by Samson, and heads it is. Rajasthan Royals will bowl first. Says it looks like a decent wicket to bowl first. Adds that they have, since the season started, focussed on not thinking too much about the goal. Lots of things have been happening, he says, with a few players not being 100% fit for this game. Buttler and Ashwin are having niggles, with Powell and Kotian coming in.
Dhawan has picked up a bit of a niggle, says Curran, and he hopes he can perform well for the team. Reckons they would have bowled first too but now that they are batting, they want to get some nice runs on the board. The middle order has been been finishing well, he says. Livingstone is back, and Taide comes in for Dhawan.
6:56pm The first big news from Mullanpur is that Sam Curran is walking out for the toss, instead of Shikhar Dhawan. We will possibly have more news on why Dhawan is missing at the toss, which is scheduled to take place at 7pm (local time).
Pitch Report: We are back to Pitch No.4, which was used for the Punjab Kings-Delhi Capitals fixture. 75m hit straight down the ground. 67m square boundary to one side, 64m to the other. Shortest and longest pocket are 60m and 73m, respectively. There is a tinge of green on the surface and the pitch is 100% black soil. Water retention could be higher, says Daren Ganga and he expects the pacers to get seam movement and be dominant. Bowling a good length, just in and around off stump could be the key to keeping teams under 50 in the powerplay. Dew could come into play but Ganga says you can also win batting first by getting an above par total. Above 180 could be par on this track.
Matthew: “Wonder whether Boult will bowl his full quota this time? Was a very bizarre choice to leave him with 2 overs left last match, surely? ” — The decision was indeed quite puzzling, especially with RR also going on to lose the game. Mitchell McClenaghan certainly thinks the Royals should trust him more at the death.
6:40pm Jonny Bairstow has not been in great form so far this season, scoring only 81 runs across five innings at an average of 16.20. Our experts weigh in on the amount of pressure he might be under.
6:30pm The last five matches between these two teams have all gone into the last over. Rajasthan have won three of those, with Punjab winning the other two. In their first meeting in 2021, Sanju Samson’s sublime hundred went in vain; in the other, Kartik Tyagi conceded just a run off the last over to defend four.
In 2023, Dhruv Jurel, coming on as an Impact Player, almost broke Punjab hearts in Guwahati, before landing the more decisive blow in Dharamsala. And way back in 2015, a Super Over had to be summoned to separate the two sides.
6:20pm The streak is over. For 35 overs on Wednesday, it seemed as if the Rajasthan Royals’ winning run would continue, only for the Gujarat Titans to snap it in extraordinary fashion. Not panic stations yet for the Royals. No team has more points than them at this stage, and a solitary loss after five games is hardly a crisis.
But the Royals will be quietly aware of what happened last season. They had four wins in their first five matches, and then stumbled their way to a fifth-place finish. Tonight, thus, is the perfect opportunity for them to illustrate how much they have learnt from 2023.
Like the Royals, the Punjab Kings were denied at the death in a home game. Ashutosh Sharma and Shashank Singh almost mounted a daring heist but fell short by two runs. A defeat of that ilk would have stung. That they came so close, despite seemingly being out of it at one stage, could help fuel their charge for tonight, though.
So, here we are: in Mullanpur for the latest instalment of arguably the most keenly-contested IPL rivalry in the past few years. Both of these sides have been around since it all began in 2008, and have played out some enthralling encounters (more on that in a bit).
Tonight should be no different. An RR win and the defeat to GT might be cast aside as an aberration. A Punjab victory, and there will be renewed belief that this is their year, while making the Royals revisit a past sequence they’re longing want to forget.
Hello and welcome to ESPNcricinfo’s live coverage of the IPL. It is Match 27, and this promises to be another classic. Jump on and let’s get stuck into the action!
