Veteran Mumbai Indians opener Rohit Sharma is ruled out of the marquee IPL 2026 clash against Punjab Kings. The 38-year-old suffered a hamstring injury in the clash against Royal Challengers Bengaluru and since then, he has returned to training but is not match-fit. Sharing an update on his injury, captain Hardik Pandya said that the idea is to take one game at a time to monitor Rohit before he returns to the playing XI.
“Yeah, Rohit is out from the last game. He's gonna take a couple of games for him to see how exactly where he is.” Pandya shared during the toss.
Meanwhile, Quinton de Kock replaced Rohit at the top of the order. He will pair with Ryan Rickelton. Since Mitchell Santner is also ruled out of the clash owing to illness, it was easy for Mumbai to select the South Africa keeper-batter as a replacement. On the other hand, Mayank Rawat has come in for Santner as the spin-bowling all-rounder.
PBKS win toss, elect to field
Punjab Kings have won the toss and elected to field first at the Wankhede Stadium. Explaining the reason behind the move, captain Shreyas Iyer explained that he had analysed the wicket to be dry in nature, but with the dew coming in later in the night, batting is expected to get better. He also revealed to be playing the same team.
“Looks a bit dry, but I interacted with a few of the players. They said that with the dew coming in, it gets better and better. So, based on that, I took that decision. We're going with the same team,” Iyer said.
Punjab Kings (Playing XI): Prabhsimran Singh (wk), Priyansh Arya, Shreyas Iyer (c), Cooper Connolly, Shashank Singh, Marcus Stoinis, Marco Jansen, Xavier Bartlett, Vijaykumar Vyshak, Arshdeep Singh, Yuzvendra Chahal
Mumbai Indians (Playing XI): Quinton de Kock (wk), Ryan Rickelton, Tilak Varma, Suryakumar Yadav, Hardik Pandya (c), Sherfane Rutherford, Naman Dhir, Mayank Rawat, Shardul Thakur, Deepak Chahar, Jasprit Bumrah
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