da bwin： They took down a target of 197 against Rajasthan Royals
da casino： ESPNcricinfo staff10-Apr-20241:51
Moody: Rashid is very difficult to bowl to
“Thank you. When GT is playing, don’t think that, eh?”Gujarat Titans are the kings of the chase, certainly in IPL cricket. They have won 16 of 22 matches batting second and often enough they have come from out of nowhere to claim victory. Wednesday night was one such occasion and in the sweet afterglow their new captain Shubman Gill couldn’t help but indulge in that throwaway line about writing them off.Titans had given up 196 runs on a pitch that looked a little tough to score runs on. The Rajasthan Royals skipper Sanju Samson mentioned there was no dew and the bounce of the ball was on the lower side as well, which means it tends to be that much harder to get under the ball and hit the big shots. He said the par score was around 180.”We were targeting 45 in three overs and that is very much gettable,” Gill said, as he broke down the way he and his team go about a T20 chase. “Fifteen runs per over [means] you just need two hits in the over and that was the mindset at that time. Mathematically, both batsmen need to score nine-ball 22 runs and if you think like that, okay, its three hits in nine balls and if one of the batsmen goes berserk, you’ll see the match getting over in two three balls. [Impact sub] definitely makes a difference, if you have an extra batter there. But it’s just the mindset [thinking of 45 in three overs as needing just two hits an over] to make things more easy, more simple.”Shubman Gill played his part in a stunning chase for Titans•Getty Images
Gill himself contributed 72 off 44 balls. It was a stunning innings, especially how he went after R Ashwin and Yuzvendra Chahal who are the Royals’ bankers in the middle overs. The Titans captain looked set to do it all on his own when he fell trying to hit a third boundary in three balls against Chahal in the 16th over and left the field smashing his bat into the turf. Titans, who came into this match with only two wins in five, needed 64 off 28 balls at that point.”I would have loved to finish the game [myself],” Gill said, “But very happy with the way Rashid [Khan] and Rahul [Tewatia] finished the game for us. In the past couple of matches as well, I thought we dominated more than 50% of the game and the bad phase was we played really bad cricket and that’s why we lost. This game, we were there and thereabouts, we were a little bit behind the game and then winning the game on the last ball is always a great feeling.”This was the fourth time (out of eight tries) that Titans have chased down 15 or more runs in the final over in the IPL. Having done so, they left the opposition captain lost for words.”To be honest it’s very hard to speak at the moment actually,” Samson, who scored an unbeaten 68 off 38, said. “It’s the hardest job in the tournament when the captain loses the game and he is supposed to tell where we lost actually. When the emotion calms down a bit, after few hours, I might tell you where exactly we lost.”You have to give credit to the Gujarat Titans, the way they bowled, the way the batted, the way they fought. When I was batting I thought something around 180 was a fighting score. I think the way Shimron Hetmyer dominated at the end of the innings and we got 196, I thought that was a winning score on this wicket. I think there was no dew. The wicket was a bit dry and low and with our bowling line-up we should have done it.”
