The departure of England players has hit Punjab Kings the hardest as they were left with just two overseas players to pick from their squad for their 14th and final league match of IPL 2024 against Sunrisers Hyderabad on Sunday.
PBKS have Nathan Ellis and Rilee Rossouw as two overseas players in their squad after six others left IPL due to various reasons.
Interestingly, PBKS have picked Rilee Rossouw as the lone overseas star in their playing XI for the SRH clash having opted to bat first in Hyderabad.
Jitesh Sharma is captaining the franchise today, becoming the third different player after Shikhar Dhawan and Sam Curran to have led them this season.
Dhawan missed majority of the season owing to fitness concerns and allrounder Curran led the side in the Indian star’s absence.
With Curran leaving to link up with England squad for the upcoming bilateral T20I series against Pakistan, wicketkeeper-batter Jitesh has been given his IPL captaincy debut.
“Proud and grateful to captain my side today. happy to finally get a bigger role,” a beaming Jitesh said during the match toss.
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PBKS won the toss and opted to bat first with their playing XI featuring as many as 10 Indian players.
“I think wicket is looking good, we want to score big and put SRH under pressure. We have few options because all the overseas have gone gone. Only Rilee Rossouw is going to play (today). We have exciting talent waiting for their opportunity and they are going to give their best today,” Jitesh said.
Playing XIs
SRH: Abhishek Sharma, Nitish Reddy, Rahul Tripathi, Heinrich Klaasen (wicketkeeper), Abdul Samad, Shahbaz Ahmed, Sanvir Singh, Pat Cummins (captain), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Vijayakanth Viyaskanth, T Natarajan
PBKS: Prabhsimran Singh, Atharva Taide, Rilee Rossouw, Shashank Singh, Jitesh Sharma(captain/wicketkeeper), Ashutosh Sharma, Shivam Singh, Harpreet Brar, Rishi Dhawan, Harshal Patel, Rahul Chahar
SRH have already qualified for the playoffs and are hoping to ensure a top-two finish now. On the other hand, it was a disappointing season for PBKS who became the second team after Mumbai Indians to drop out of the playoffs race earlier this month.
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