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Rashid Khan, Rahul Tewatia late heroics seal it for Gujarat Titans despite Umran Malik’s fiver
Umran Malik’s brilliant five-wicket haul put Sunrisers Hyderabad ahead only for their former player Rashid Khan to steal the show
Gujarat Titans and Sunrisers Hyderabad came into the match as table toppers and in the end the two teams showed why by putting up a nail-biting contest at the Wankhede stadium on Wednesday. If there was Umran Malik’s fiery five-wicket haul—his first in IPL for SRH, it was topped by Titans’ ultimate finisher Rahul Tewatia 40* (21, 4x4, 2x6), who narrowed the 196-run target down from 47 off 18 balls to 35 from 12 before getting the 22 runs needed off Marco Jansen’s last over.
Requiring 15 runs of 4 balls, Rashid Khan swung his bat hard with three sixes to finish with 31* (11b, 4x6).
It was SRH-GT’s second face-off in the tournament and both batting units put up a show. At the end, Titans’ brave lower order made sure their quickfire start with the bat did not go waste. Chasing 196, Gujarat Titans went 10-an-over in the powerplay, finding an unlikely aggressor in Wriddhiman Saha going at a strike rate of 200 and Shubman Gill scoring at less than run-a-ball.
Saha, using his short backlift took a special liking to 6’ 8” Jansen, hitting the South Africa pacer all over the park. Against spin, Saha frequently used his feet, targetting his favoured leg-side region and finished with a 38-ball 68 before Malik’s fastest ball of the match (152.8kph) send him back. The tearaway quick again put up a show, unsettling batters with high pace, sending Gill (22) back and nipping Hardik Pandya’s (10) innings in the bud with a fast bouncer. Malik lighted the stumps with two more dismissals, getting the better of David Miller (17) and Abhinav Manohar (0), before Tewatia and Khan took over.
With the ball for GT, Mohammed Shami showed he hasn’t lost any sting. The hint of swing is all he needs. He added two more wickets to his kitty by beating the inside edge of Kane Williamson (5), which bowled him, and Rahul Tripathi (16). The delivery seaming in to Tripathi required a review but so sharply did the ball curl in that the dynamic batter had to depart, much before he could take up the role of controlling the middle overs.
But SRH found a volunteer in Abhishek Sharma. Quietly growing in confidence in the tournament, he took on ex-teammate Rashid Khan. In Sharma, Khan found his match who saw the ball so clearly off his hands that he disdainfully swatted him for three sixes between deep mid-wicket and long-on. The third one helped bring up Sharma’s fifty in the 12th over. Khan’s figures at the end of his quota read 0/45.
At the 15-over mark, SRH were looking good for 200, which had looked in doubt after Alzarri Joseph shattered Sharma’s stumps on 65 (42b, 6x4, 3x6), Shami sent back Nicolas Pooran (3) and Yash Dayal’s slower ball ended Aiden Markram’s innings (56—40b). But the 25-run final over bowled by Lockie Ferguson courtesy a 6-ball 25-run cameo by Shashank Singh took them to 195.
