Surprise Surprise – the King Is Back. Virat Kohli marched out at toss time at the PCA Stadium in Mohali to stun everyone as the former RCB skipper was leading the franchise one more time.
RBC took on PBKS in Mohali on Thursday afternoon.
Why did Virat Kohli captain RCB today? And where is Faf du Plessis?
Faf du Plessis is battling a back injury, so he will not be fielding. Hence, RCB Batter took over the captaincy duties, but Faf will be batting and later will be replaced by the Impact Player, Kohli confirmed this at the toss.
During RCB’s last game, vs CSK, their captain Faf called out for the physio to attend to some pain in his back and it was seen during the live match.
While there are no reports of any major back issue, RCB have been understood to not take any chance with their skipper’s fitness and thus advised Faf to not do fielding. The Impact Player rule allows Faf to only do the batting job and then rest from fielding as RCB will then bring in pacer Vyshak Vijaykumar as the Impact Player when they come onto bowl.
So, Kohli led RCB again for the first time after stepping down at the end of the 2021 IPL.
Speaking at the toss, Virat Kohli said: “Faf potentially can’t be fielding today, so he’ll be playing as a impact player, switching with Vyshak. We got to do what we wanted, we would have batted first, the pitch could get slow, some scruff marks will help the bowlers going deep into the game. Taking one game at a time, focussing on our own game, make the most of crunch situations, we haven’t done that so far in the tournament. No other changes for us.”
Earlier in this IPL 2023, Mumbai Indians used this Impact Player rule when their skipper Rohit Sharma was dealing with a stomach bug. Suryakumar Yadav led the side on the field against KKR but when it came for MI’s batting, Rohit came on as Impact Player.
Punjab Kings are also not without their regular captain Shikhar Dhawan, who is still injured.
Punjab’s interim skipper Sam Curran won the toss and elected to field first.
Teams:
RCB (Playing XI): Virat Kohli(c), Faf du Plessis, Mahipal Lomror, Glenn Maxwell, Shahbaz Ahmed, Dinesh Karthik(w), Wanindu Hasaranga, Suyash Prabhudessai, Harshal Patel, Wayne Parnell, Mohammed Siraj
PBKS (Playing XI): Atharva Taide, Matthew Short, Harpreet Singh Bhatia, Liam Livingstone, Sam Curran(c), Jitesh Sharma(w), Shahrukh Khan, Harpreet Brar, Nathan Ellis, Rahul Chahar, Arshdeep Singh
