Mumbai, March 31: Former skipper Rohit Sharma was demoted to the substitutes' bench as Mumbai Indians won the toss and elected to bowl first against Kolkata Knight Riders in Match 12 of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 at the Wankhede Stadium here on Monday.

While Rohit was relegated to the role of Impact Substitute, Mumbai brought in Will Jacks and also handed a debut to left-arm seamer Ashwani Kumar. Vignesh Puthur also found a place in the playing XI and will most likely make way for Rohit Sharma when MI launch their chase.

KKR, as was expected, brought back Sunil Narine into the playing XI in place of Moeen Ali. Narine had withdrawn from their last match against the Rajasthan Royals due to illness.

Explaining the rationale behind opting to field first, Mumbai Indians skipper Hardik Pandya said they want to make first use of the first wicket and extract early swing, with dew expected to come into play later in the evening.

Pandya plays down Mumbai losing the first two matches and says it is a long tournament. He hoped that things would take a turn for the better for his team tonight and said they would have to play better cricket if they were to do that.

Kolkata Knight Riders captain Ajinkya Rahane said he would have also liked to bowl first, but was a little unsure. So, he felt it was a good toss to lose. He said they have a good bowling attack to defend a total.

Playing XIs:

Mumbai Indians: Ryan Rickelton (wk), Will Jacks, Suryakumar Yadav, Tilak Varma, Hardik Pandya (c), Naman Dhir, Mitchell Santner, Deepak Chahar, Trent Boult, Ashwani Kumar, Vignesh Puthur.

Impact subs: Rohit Sharma, Corbin Bosch, Raj Bawa, Robin Minz, Satyanarayana Raju

Kolkata Knight Riders: Sunil Narine, Quinton de Kock (wk), Ajinkya Rahane (c), Venkatesh Iyer, Rinku Singh, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Spencer Johnson, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakravarthy.

Impact subs: Anrich Nortje, Manish Pandey, Vaibhav Arora, Anukul Roy, Luvnith Sisodia.

(IANS)

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