Delhi Capitals won the toss and Axar Patel chose to bat. His decision was based on an intuition that the pitch might slow up and prevent rapid scoring in the second innings. Chennai Super Kings captain Ruturaj Gaikwad appears prepared for that situation, noting that the pitch looked dry, which indicates the ball might stop on it and not come onto the bat freely. CSK wanted to bowl so they won’t be fussed they lost the toss. It had rained in Delhi overnight, and in the afternoon, so they might believe that could have improved conditions for batting.

DC are back to full strength with Lungi Ngidi returning to their XI in place of Kyle Jamieson. Karun Nair has been called in too with Sameer Rizvi dropping into the Impact Players bench.

CSK had a couple of changes as well with left-arm spinner Akeal Hosein and left-arm quick Gurjapneet Singh coming in. They won the last game but lost a player to injury – allrounder Ramakrishna Ghosh, prompting a significant reshuffle.

Delhi Capitals: 1 KL Rahul, 2 Pathum Nissanka, 3 Karun Nair, 4 Tristan Stubbs, 5 Nitish Rana, 6 Axar Patel, 7 Ashutosh Sharma, 8 Lungi Ngidi, 9 Mitchell Starc, 10 Kuldeep Yadav, 11 T Natarajan

DC’s Impact Player bench: Vipraj, Rizvi, Porel, Auqib, Miller

Chennai Super Kings: 1 Sanju Samson, Ruturaj Gaikwad, Urvil Patel, Kartik Sharma, Dewald Brevis, Jamie Overton, Akeal Hosein, Noor Ahmad, Anshul Kamboj, Mukesh Chowdhary, Gurjapneet Singh

CSK’s Impact Player bench: Dube, Veer, Short, Madhwal, Sarfaraz