RCB opt bowl with Hazlewood back; Omarzai for Jansen in PBKS

Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) welcomed back captain Rajat Patidar to full fitness, and Josh Hazlewood back into the XI. Patidar came out for the toss after playing the last two matches as non-captain, won the toss immediately, and opted to bowl. RCB were also the away team in Qualifier 1. They won all their seven away games in the league stage. However, they were still without Tim David, who seemed to have injured his hamstring during their penultimate league match.

Punjab Kings (PBKS) were still without Yuzvendra Chahal, and they also lost Marco Jansen to the South Africa Test side. Azmatullah Omarzai came in for him. New Chandigarh was PBKS' home ground during the league stage, but they didn't have a great record at home. They won two, lost two, and their captain Shreyas Iyer scored just 25 runs in those four matches.

This was RCB's first top-two finish since 2016. PBKS made the playoffs for the first time in 11 years. Both sides were looking for their maiden title. The team losing this match was guaranteed a second shot at making the final. Both sides finished the league stage on the same number of points, with PBKS leading on net run rate.

Punjab Kings 1 Priyansh Arya, 2 Prabhsimran Singh, 3 Josh Inglis (wk), 4 Shreyas Iyer (capt.), 5 Nehal Wadhera, 6 Shashank Singh, 7 Marcus Stoinis, 8 Azmatullah Omarzai, 9 Harpreet Brar, 10 Kyle Jamieson, 11 Arshdeep Singh
Impact Sub options Vijaykumar Vyshak, Praveen Dubey, Suryansh Shedge, Musheer Khan, Xavier Bartlett

Royal Challengers Bengaluru 1 Virat Kohli, 2 Phil Salt, 3 Rajat Patidar (capt.), 4 Liam Livingstone, 5 Jitesh Sharma (wk), 6 Romario Shepherd, 7 Krunal Pandya, 8 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 9 Yash Dayal, 10 Josh Hazlewood, 11 Suyash Sharma
Impact Sub options Mayank Agarwal, Rasikh Salam, Manoj Bhandage, Tim Seifert, Swapnil Singh