New Chandigarh, April 28 (IANS) Rajasthan Royals won the toss and elected to field against Punjab Kings in the 40th match of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026 at the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium in New Chandigarh, on Tuesday.

Shimron Hetmyer and Ravi Bishnoi have been replaced by Dasun Shanaka and Yash Punja in the eleven for Rajasthan. For Punjab, Suryansh Shedge and Lockie Ferguson come in for Shashank Singh and Xavier Bartlett.

Rajasthan Royals captain Riyan Parag said, “We are going to bowl first. Looks like a pretty good wicket. But there was a bit of cloud cover and a bit of a shower as well. A little bit of moisture at the start. We are trying to strike that to get some early wickets. Hopefully chase it down. 2 changes, Hetmyer sits out, Dasun Shanaka comes in. Ravi Bishnoi goes out, Yash Punja comes in. It is very hard to practice that, but everyone’s played a lot of cricket, and you have to really keep your nerve in a pressure situation and test your character.”

Punjab Kings captain Shreyas Iyer said, “We would have loved to bowl first as well. I asked one of my team members. The wicket was covered for the last few days because of the weather. All of us are proactive, irrespective of whether we are bowling first or second. We have one forced change. Suryansh comes in place of Shashank. Also, Lockie comes in place of Xavier. All the individuals have goals to achieve. We know what we have to do to achieve those goals. It’s important to keep the momentum. On behalf of the whole team, I want to express my condolences to Azmat and his family for the loss. We are with him during this hard time.”

Playing XIs:

Rajasthan Royals: Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Dhruv Jurel (wk), Riyan Parag (c), Donovan Ferreira, Ravindra Jadeja, Dasun Shanaka, Jofra Archer, Nandre Burger, Brijesh Sharma, Yash Punja

Impact substitutes: Shimron Hetmyer, Shubham Dubey, Tushar Deshpande, Ravi Bishnoi, Ravi Singh

Punjab Kings: Priyansh Arya, Prabhsimran Singh (wk), Cooper Connolly, Shreyas Iyer (c), Suryansh Shedge, Nehal Wadhera, Marcus Stoinis, Marco Jansen, Lockie Ferguson, Arshdeep Singh, Yuzvendra Chahal

Impact substitutes: Musheer Ahmed Khan, Vishnu Vinod, Vyshak Vijaykumar, Xavier Bartlett, Harpreet Brar

–IANS

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