Kings XI Punjab v Royal Challengers Bangalore, IPL 2017, Indore
Royal Challengers Bangalore welcomed back AB de Villiers, who missed the team's first two games because of a back injury, and chose to bat against Kings XI Punjab in Indore. Chris Gayle, who is 25 away from the 10,000-run mark in T20 cricket, was left out, despite being the top-scoring IPL batsman against Kings XI Punjab with 797 runs off 454 balls. Shane Watson, meanwhile, remained captain despite de Villiers' inclusion. In the absence of Gayle, Kerala wicketkeeper-batsman Vishnu Vinod, who hit 14 sixes - the most by a player in the Inter-state T20 tournament, was listed to open with Watson.
Kings XI Punjab also made a change, though it was not like-for-like. They beefed up an already strong pace attack, which includes Mohit Sharma, Sandeep Sharma, T Natarajan and Marcus Stoinis, by bringing in Varun Aaron at the expense of left-arm spinner Swapnil Singh.
Teams batting first have won the last five matches between RCB and Kings XI. And in the previous T20 tournament in Indore, the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy in 2015, the team batting first had won seven out of ten matches.
Kings XI Punjab: 1 Manan Vohra, 2 Hashim Amla, 3 Wriddhiman Saha (wk), 4 Glenn Maxwell (capt), 5 David Miller, 6 Marcus Stoinis, 7 Axar Patel, 8 Varun Aaron, 9 Sandeep Sharma, 10 Mohit Sharma, 11 T Natarajan
Royal Challengers Bangalore: 1 Shane Watson (capt), 2 Vishnu Vinod (wk), 3 AB de Villiers, 4 Kedar Jadhav, 5 Mandeep Singh, 6 Pawan Negi, 7 Stuart Binny, 8 Iqbal Abdulla, 9 Tymal Mills, 10 Yuzvendra Chahal , 11 Billy Stanlake
