On Thursday morning, Kings XI Punjab tweeted a video of their players flying to UAE. Mohammed Shami also tweeted a picture after boarding the flight and wrote: "Apne munde Lion off to Dubai." KXIP have become the first team to depart for UAE.
The BCCI had allowed the franchises to leave the base after August 19 and the teams were quick to ferry the players to UAE.
In line with the stringent BCCI guidelines to all 8 franchises over testing and quarantine protocals, KXIP franchises had started assembling their players a few days back and placed them in quarantine for a while.
Kings XI Punjab did not organise a camp in India, following a different approach to players conditioning than CSK which had a week long camp in India. As per the rules, all the players and officials underwent COVID-19 tests before joining the camp and before boarding the flight to UAE.
All the players and officials will have to adhere to SOPs issued by BCCI. The players and officials will land in quarantine for seven days upon landing in UAE and will undergo rounds of testing.
KL Rahul will be doning the captaincy hat for the very first time in the IPL as he leads the Punjab outfit in the thirteenth edition.While veteran Indian spin great Anil Kumble who will assume head coach duties, will be assisted by a highly experienced support staff in Jonty Rhodes, Wasim Jaffer, Charl Langeveldt.
Punjab will be looking for a much better performance in this edition as they finished in the bottom half of the table, ending at 6th and 7th spot in the previous two seasons.
The thirteenth edition of the IPL will be played in the United Arab Emirates for the second time since the inception of the league in 2008. The Middle East nation has hosted the IPL once before in 2014. The Emirates Cricket Board got the official clearance by the BCCI to stage the tournament after the Indian board got the green signal from the government to have the tournament hosted overseas in UAE amid rising cases of Covid-19 in India.
Kings Eleven Punjab Squad For IPL 2020: Chris Gayle, Mayank Agarwal, Karun Nair, Sarfaraz Khan, Mandeep Singh, Sheldon Cottrell, Ishan Porel, Ravi Bishnoi, Mohammed Shami, Mujeeb ur Rahman, Arshdeep Singh, Hardus Viljoen, M Ashwin, J Suchith, Harpreet Brar, Darshan Nalkande, Glenn Maxwell, James Neesham, Chris Jordan, Krishnappa Gowtham, Deepak Hooda, Tajinder Singh Dhillon, KL Rahul (C), Nicholas Pooran, Prabhsimran Singh.