The Gujarat Lions have received a major blow with Brendon McCullum getting ruled out of the remainder of IPL 2017. The Gujarat Lions will miss the New Zealand star when they face Kings XI Punjab at IS Bindra Stadium in Mohali on Sunday.
While Gujarat Lions lost McCullum, KXIP have to do without the services of Marcus Stoinis who injured his shoulder.
After a quality win over RCB in the last match, KXIP are likely to keep the winning combination intact. Martin Guptill, Hashim Amla, Shaun Marsh and Glenn Maxwell would fill the foreign player slots. While KXIP depend on foreign batsmen to do the bulk of the scoring, domestic players have the run of the bowling department. The match against GL could be the last for South African players like David Miller and Hashim Amla with England series round the corner.
In-form Sandeep Sharma is the trump card of KXIP. Though Maxwell might be keen to retain the last playing XI, T Natarajan could make way for KC Cariappa.
GL have only four foreign players at their disposal in Dwayne Smith, Aaron Finch, James Faulkner and Chirag Suri. Jason Roy is away on national duty and Dwayne Bravo was ruled out of IPL 2017 earlier.
It remains to be seen if UAE player Suri will get a start. If GL decide to go with just three foreign players, Irfan Pathan could get another chance.
Finch and Suresh Raina will hold the key for Gujarat Lions on Sunday.
Confirmed playing XI
Kings XI Punjab: Hashim Amla, Martin Guptill, Shaun Marsh, Glenn Maxwell (c), W Saha (wk), Axar Patel, Gurkeerat Singh, Mohit Sharma, Sandeep Sharma, Varun Aaron, T Natarajan
Gujarat Lions: Ishan Kishan, Aaron Finch, Suresh Raina (C), Dinesh Karthik, Dwayne Smith, Ravindra Jadeja, James Faulkner, Dhawal Kulkarni, Basil Thampi, Pradeep Sangwan, Ankit Soni.
