Kings XI Punjab v Delhi Daredevils, IPL 2011, Dharamsala

Morne Morkel returns; Delhi bowl in Dharamsala

The IPL arrived at its most picturesque venue - Dharamsala - and was welcomed by snow-capped peaks in the background, and a pitch filled with unknowns at the fore-front. James Hopes won the toss and chose to field on a greenish pitch that was expected to aid the batsmen more than the seamers.

Delhi are out of the running for the play-offs, and chose to make wholesale changes to their XI, the most high-profile being the return of Morne Morkel. Travis Birt and S Sriram were also brought in to beef up the batting, while Andrew McDonald was relegated to the bench after just one game. Hopes looked forward to improvements in his side's bowling in the death overs, which he admitted was a primary reason for their failures.

Adam Gilchrist revealed he did not mind losing the toss since he wasn't sure what the pitch had in store. Punjab's campaign is back on track with two successive wins, but they need to keep the streak running through their last three league games to be in contention for the play-offs. Their cause was helped by the return of Praveen Kumar, who replaced Bipul Sharma.

Kings XI Punjab: 1 Adam Gilchrist (capt & wk), 2 Paul Valthaty, 3 Shaun Marsh, 4 Dinesh Karthik, 5 David Hussey, 6 Mandeep Singh, 7 Shalabh Srivastava, 8 Praveen Kumar, 9 Piyush Chawla, 10 Ryan Harris, 11 Bhargav Bhatt

Delhi Daredevils: 1 David Warner, 2 Naman Ojha (wk), 3 Travis Birt, 4 Venugopal Rao, 5 S Sriram, 6 James Hopes (capt), 7 Irfan Pathan, 8 Yogesh Nagar, 9 Varun Aaron, 10 Morne Morkel, 11 Aavishkar Salvi

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Nitin Sundar is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo