Punjab Kings vs Gujarat Titans, IPL 2026: Shreyas Iyer-led Punjab Kings won the toss and elected to bowl first at the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium, Mullanpur, New Chandigarh. There is some white grass on the pitch, but mostly dry, and is expected to have good carry for the fast bowlers. Iyer wanted to have a go at Gujarat Titans first, as he firmly believes that chasing gives his team the best chance to win the game, adding that the practice games ahead of the match against GT resulted in the team batting second winning pretty easily. His decision was entirely based on the recent results in Mullanpur.
PBKS vs GT: Gujarat Take First Strike — Decoding Mullanpur’s Par Score
The average first innings score in this stadium is 169 in 11 matches played here. However, the average first innings score shoots up to 217 on this pitch. There have only been two matches played on the same pitch previously.
“We’re going to bowl first. I firmly believe that chasing gives you a fair idea about how to go about the target. And also, we played a couple of practice games and whatever total was scored, I think it was easily chased down. So, thinking that at the back of my mind, I’m taking that decision,” said Iyer, after winning the toss.
“Very good. I think the wicket looks pretty good. It has been under the covers for the past couple of days, rain on and off, and a bit cloudy. But when we came in today, we looked at the wicket, it looked like a pretty good wicket to bat on,” Gill said at the toss after being asked to bat first.
The outfield looks fantastic, with square dimensions standing at 64m and 70m; The straight boundary is 74m, the longest of them all, and the bowlers would ideally look to bowl and avoid the back of a length ball, which tends to err on the shorter side in T20 cricket.
Teams:
Punjab Kings (Playing XI): Prabhsimran Singh(w), Cooper Connolly, Shreyas Iyer(c), Nehal Wadhera, Shashank Singh, Marcus Stoinis, Marco Jansen, Xavier Bartlett, Vijaykumar Vyshak, Arshdeep Singh, Yuzvendra Chahal.
PBKS Impact subs: Priyansh Arya, Harpreet Brar, Praveen Dubey, Vishnu Vinod, Suryansh Shedge
Gujarat Titans (Playing XI): Sai Sudharsan, Shubman Gill(c), Jos Buttler(w), Washington Sundar, Glenn Phillips, M Shahrukh Khan, Rahul Tewatia, Rashid Khan, Kagiso Rabada, Ashok Sharma, Mohammed Siraj
GT Impact subs: Prasidh Krishna, Jason Holder, Jayant Yadav, Manav Suthar, Kumar Kushagra
