New Chandigarh, March 31 (IANS) Punjab Kings have won the toss and elected to bowl first against the Gujarat Titans in match four of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026, played at the PCA New International Cricket Stadium on Tuesday. Punjab Kings enjoyed a stellar campaign in IPL 2025, finishing as runners-up and marking one of their best performances in the tournament’s history.

On the other hand, the Gujarat Titans had a strong IPL 2025 campaign, finishing 3rd in the league stage under captain Shubman Gill. GT lost the Eliminator to the Mumbai Indians by 20 runs.

These two sides began their seasons against each other in 2025 as well, with Punjab Kings triumphing by 11 runs at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.

After winning the toss, Punjab Kings captain Shreyas Iyer said, “We’re going to bowl first. I firmly believe that chasing gives you a fair idea about how to approach 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. We had a phenomenal last season. We have to stay in the present. We didn’t have to think about the past. We need to play our best brand of cricket. Cooper has come in. Stoinis, Bartlett, and Marco Jansen are the four overseas players.”

Meanwhile, after losing the toss, Gujarat Titans skipper Shubman Gill said, “The wicket looks pretty good. It has been raining on and off over the last two days. Looks like a good wicket to bat on. Last year, we had a pretty good season. Two debutants — Glenn and Ashok Sharma. We’ve got Jos, Glenn, Rashid, and Rabada. He (Buttler) is such an experienced player, I am sure he’s going to have a great year for us.”

Punjab Kings and Gujarat Titans have faced each other six times in IPL history, with both sides giving tough competition to each other, as the head-to-head record is tied with PBKS winning three encounters, and GT also came victorious on three occasions.

Playing XIs:

Punjab Kings: Prabhsimran Singh (wk), Cooper Connolly, Shreyas Iyer (c), Nehal Wadhera, Shashank Singh, Marcus Stoinis, Marco Jansen, Xavier Bartlett, Vijaykumar Vyshak, Arshdeep Singh, Yuzvendra Chahal

Impact substitutes: Priyansh Arya, Harpreet Brar, Praveen Dubey, Vishnu Vinod, Suryansh Shedge

Gujarat Titans: Sai Sudharsan, Shubman Gill (c), Jos Buttler (wk), Washington Sundar, Glenn Phillips, M Shahrukh Khan, Rahul Tewatia, Rashid Khan, Kagiso Rabada, Ashok Sharma, Mohammed Siraj

Impact substitutes: Prasidh Krishna, Jason Holder, Jayant Yadav, Manav Suthar, Kumar Kushagra

–IANS

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