Rising Pune Supergiant and Kings XI Punjab will square-off in a “winner takes all” knockout game for the fourth and final play-off berth in an Indian Premier League encounter in Pune on Sunday, PTI reported.

Supergiant are currently on 16 points from 13 games with a net run-rate -0.083 while Kings XI Punjab are on 14 points from equal number of matches but have a comparatively better run-rate of +0.296.

When the two teams square off on Sunday, the equation is pretty simple for Glenn Maxwell’s team. A win is all that they need to qualify as it will take them to 16 points with a superior net run rate. The Punjab outfit doesn’t have to look at any other results.

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For Pune, it will be a challenge facing KXIP, whose campaign gained momentum during the business end of the tournament.

Time: 4 pm
Venue: Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium, Pune
TV: Sony Max, Sony Six, Sony ESPN and their HD Channels
Head-to-head since 2016
Played: 3
RPS: 1
Kings XI: 2

Rising Pune Supergiant

  • If Rising Pune Supergiant win, they will move up to the No 2 spot in the standings.
  • This will be Ben Stokes’ final game for Pune this season. He will not be available for the play-offs, if they are to qualify. The team is already missing the services of Imran Tahir, who left for international duty.

“I stayed relaxed throughout the first phase of the tournament. I have enjoyed a lot. Now, we are on a winning run and have the chance to finish in the top-two. The best thing is that we are not dependent on one or two guys. Majority of our players have performed.”

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- Steve Smith, Rising Pune Supergiant.

Squad: Steve Smith (c), Ajinkya Rahane, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Ashok Dinda, Mayank Agarwal, Faf du Plessis, Ankit Sharma, Baba Aparajith, Ankush Bains, Rajat Bhatia, Deepak Chahar, Rahul Chahar, Dan Christian, Lockie Ferguson, Imran Tahir, Jaskaran Singh, Usman Khawaja, Saurabh Kumar, Ben Stokes, Washington Sundar, Milind Tandon, Manoj Tiwary, Adam Zampa, Jaydev Unadkat, Ishwar Pandey, Rahul Tripathi, Shardul Thakur.

Kings XI Punjab

  • Kings XI’s campaign has gained momentum in the last week. They go into the game on Sunday having won two games back to back.
  • In the six games played in Pune, the team that wins the toss has elected to chase in all the 6 matches in Pune this season. Unfortunately for Kings XI, skipper Maxwell has had a poor luck with the coin. He has won just four times in 13 games.

“In the last three games, whatever we were doing batting/fielding, the target was the attitude should be of nothing to lose, execute in batting, bowling and fielding, play the natural game, then we will see what happens, we have defeated KKR and MI (and) we will try to play against Pune as we played in these two games.”

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- Wriddhiman Saha, Kings XI Punjab.

Squad: Glenn Maxwell (c), David Miller, Manan Vohra, Hashim Amla, Shaun Marsh, Armaan Jaffer, Martin Guptill, Eoin Morgan, Rinku Singh, Sandeep Sharma, Arman Jaffer, Anureet Singh, Mohit Sharma, KC Cariappa, Pradeep Sahu, Swapnil Singh, T Natrajan, Matt Henry, Varun Aaron, Axar Patel, Marcus Stoinis, Gurkeerat Mann, Rahul Tewatia, Darren Sammy, Wriddhiman Saha, Nikhil Naik, Ishant Sharma.