Gujarat Titans beat SRH comfortably by 38 runs
Gujarat Titans’ win over Sunrisers Hyderabad was more or less confirmed by the 16th over when Prasidh Krishna removed the dangerous Heinrich Klaasen with a smart seaming delivery.
However, GT players gave it their all until the final over. In the penultimate over, Mohammed Siraj slid across the outfield after running in from long-off to stop a boundary while Rashid Khan ran in from deep mid-wicket in the final over when 42 runs were needed from five balls.
Rashid missed the catch by a long distance and the way he picked the ball and hurled it at the keeper, showed how committed the GT team were. Ironically, Ishant Sharma who was bowling the final over, fell over in his follow through and seemed to have twisted his ankle which required medical attention.
The veteran pacer had to be forced off the field as a result as spinner R Sai Kishore bowled the remaining four balls to wrap up the match for GT.
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Strangely enough, the first ball of the over was an identical delivery – a slow full toss directed at Pat Cummins’ which the SRH captain launched high into the night sky. On the first attempt, Siraj had to back off from running into the circle as Ishant realised a little too late that he should’ve gone for a return catch.
The lanky pacer missed the ball by an inch. Cummins and his partner Nitish Kumar Reddy completed two runs in the meantime.
Ishant, who came in as an Impact Player substitution in the second innings for Sai Sudharsan, got the key wicket of Abhishek Sharma who was going well at 74 off 41 balls. This wrested the control back in GT’s hands and allowed Prasidh Krishna to skittle out the middle-order.
SRH finished 20 overs at 186/6 which leaves them on the brink of elimination from the playoffs race. The 2016 champions are ninth in the table after 10 games with seven losses and only three wins.
GT, meanwhile, shrugged off their defeat to Rajasthan Royals and climbed back to second place behind Mumbai Indians.
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