Suresh Raina was phenomenal in the last match and they will hope he fires again when they take on Kings XI Punjab who are looking for any kind of inspiration that comes their way. Amla smashed a 100 in the last game but they still lost and that has been the pity as their bowlers have not shown discipline in crucial times. They would desperately hope Mannan Vohra and Glenn Maxwell fire.
Lions and Kings XI have a 1-1 record against each other, winning their respective away games in 2016.
Both sides have almost reached a stage where anything less than a win would hamper their qualification chances.
Brendon McCullum has fired but has not been consistent and that has been worrying them and he personally would like to overturn that.
Axar Patel may bowl more than one over in the Powerplay. He has a healthy record against all of Gujarat’s overseas players in the IPL.
Rajkot has been the best batting ground in IPL 2017 – teams score at a run rate of 9.88 and every wicket costs 46.45 runs.
This is the first match of the double-header Sunday. The match starts at 1600 hrs. Be there to catch the action on inUth.com
The likely XIs
Kings XI Punjab 1 Hashim Amla, 2 Manan Vohra, 3 Shaun Marsh, 4 Glenn Maxwell (capt), 5 Wriddhiman Saha (wk), 6 Marcus Stoinis, 7 Axar Patel, 8 Mohit Sharma, 9 Sandeep Sharma, 10 Varun Aaron, 11 Ishant Sharma
Gujarat Lions 1 Brendon McCullum, 2 Aaron Finch, 3 Suresh Raina (capt), 4 Dwayne Smith, 5 Dinesh Karthik (wk), 6 Ishan Kishan, 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 James Faulkner, 9 Praveen Kumar, 10 Dhawal Kulkarni, 11 Basil Thampi
