Punjab Kings (PBKS) will take the field against the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in the 31st match of IPL 2025 on April 15 at Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium in Mullanpur
Punjab Kings are coming into the game after losing their last match against SRH, courtesy of a once-in-a-lifetime innings from Abhishek Sharma, who scored his maiden IPL century
KKR romped home without breaking a sweat against CSK and will look to register another win against PBKS on Tuesday.
Punjab Kings Playing 11 vs KKR- IPL 2025, Match 31:
Openers: Prabhsimran Singh (wk) and Priyansh Arya
Prabhsimran Singh will open the innings for PBKS along with Priyansh Arya. Prabhsimran, who has been part of the Punjab Kings setup for a while now, has complemented his partner and youngster Priyansh Arya nicely, who has been the stand-out batter for the team with his aggressive approach in the powerplay.
Priyansh started the tournament with a quick-fire innings against GT and followed it up with his maiden IPL century against the former champions CSK
Both openers will look to keep up the good work they have shown in the last few matches and would like to provide a solid start to Punjab Kings against KKR
It will be interesting to see whether the openers are able to continue the attacking approach that they have played with in the tournament so far.
Middle-order batsmen and all-rounders: Shreyas Iyer (c), Marcus Stoinis, Nehal Wadhera, Glenn Maxwell, Shashank Singh, Suryansh Shegde, Marco Jansen
Punjab Kings possesses a strong and in-form middle order comprising the likes of Shreyas Iyer, Marcus Stoinis, Nehal Wadhera, and Shashank Singh. Having said that, PBKS would like experienced Australian all-rounder Glenn Maxwell to get back among the runs to gain some sort of confidence
On the other hand, Maxwell’s countryman Marcus Stoinis found his mojo back in the last match against SRH and took on Mohammed Shami in the last over to provide a good, strong finish to the innings
The Shreyas Iyer-led side would like to replicate the batting performance they displayed against SRH in an important game against defending champions KKR
Bowlers: Arshdeep Singh, Yash Thakur, Yuzvendra Chahal
Punjab Kings will hope for a better show from the bowlers than the way they bowled against SRH in the last game, where Arshdeep and co were unable to defend a total of 245 runs courtesy of some intelligent and aggressive batting from Abhishek Sharma.
The bowlers were unable to restrict RR in their first game in Mullanpur as they conceded 205 runs while bowling first and lost the match by a decent margin, which took a toll on their net run rate.
One of the biggest concerns for PBKS would be the form of their two experienced Indian bowlers, Arshdeep Singh and Yuzvendra Chahal, who haven’t performed as per expectations so far.
Punjab would also be sweating over the availability of Lockie Ferguson, who got injured while bowling in the last match against SRH and is likely to be replaced by Yash Thakur