Top-Order: Although Manan Vohra had a poor season last year scoring just 82 from seven matches, he more or less will retain the opening slot along with Murali Vijay. The latter was the third highest run-scorer for Punjab in 2015 with 251 runs from 11 innings. With Virender Sehwag now retired from international cricket including IPL, a huge chunk of responsibility falls on this duo to give Punjab the required good starts on regular intervals. They have done in the past and there is no reason why they cannot do in the coming matches. Vohra easily has an upper hand against the opponents since Mohali is his home ground; he has played enough cricket in the venue since his domestic debut.
Middle-Order: Punjab have one of the strongest line-ups in the middle, at least on paper with the likes of Miller, Glenn Maxwell, Shaun Marsh and Wriddhiman Saha. The wicketkeeper-batsman, Saha, had scored a century in the final against KKR in 2014 when the entire team had failed. That knock of his demonstrated his capability of handling pressure and stepping up in crunch situations and that’s exactly what a middle-order batsman is demanded of. Maxwell, who plays the Chris Gayle of Punjab will have to come up with more responsible innings this time around in order to remain at the crease for longer times.
The skipper himself is a power hitter and he is coming off a good World T20 despite South Africa crashing out from the group stage. He was one of the few Proteas who delivered with the bat in most of the occasions. Along with his form, he will have to handle the huge responsibility of the side’s captaincy. It will be interesting to watch how the youngster handles these departments.
Lower-Order and Bowling: The trio of Kyle Abbott, Sandeep Sharma and Mohit Sharma will have to be at their top game to ensure Punjab do not have to chase down big totals whenever they will have to bat second. Akshar Patel being their only full-time spin option with Maxwell chipping in with his off-break. Abbott played three World T20 matches and had picked a total of seven wickets so Punjab have had a good buy in the auction. On the other hand, Sandeep who has been with Punjab since 2013 has been one of the keys players down the order who can even hit the ball hard towards the last overs.
Kyle Abbott, Anureet Singh, Armaan Jaffer, Farhaan Behardien, Konganda Cariappa, Rishi Dhawan, Gurkeerat Singh, Mitchell Johnson, Shaun Marsh, Glenn Maxwell, David Miller, Nikhil Naik, Axar Patel, Wriddhiman Saha, Pardeep Sahu, Sandeep Sharma, Mohit Sharma, Marcus Stoinis, Swapnil Singh, Shardul Thakur, Murali Vijay, Manan Vohra
Dwayne Bravo, Paras Dogra, Eklavya Dwivedi, James Faulkner, Aaron Finch, Ishan Kishan, Ravindra Jadeja, Shadab Jakati, Dinesh Karthik, Shival Kaushik, Dhawal Kulkarni, Praveen Kumar, Sarabjit Ladda, Brendon McCullum, Amit Mishra, Akshdeep Nath, Suresh Raina, Pradeep Sangwan, Jaydev Shah, Umang Sharma, Dwayne Smith, Dale Steyn, Pravin Tambe, Andrew Tye