Shubman Gill, Rahul Tewatia star as Gujarat Titans stun Punjab Kings by six wickets at Mohali in IPL 2023

The Gujarat Titans (GT) triumphed over the Punjab Kings (PBKS) quite comfortably at the Punjab Cricket Association (PCA) Stadium in Mohali on Thursday. Rahul Tewatia struck the winning runs off the penultimate delivery of the game to take the visitors home as the hosts succumbed to a second successive loss in the 16^th season of the Indian Premier LeagGujarat titanse (IPL).

Chasing 154, the Titans were steered through most parts of the innings by Shubman Gill, who notched 67 runs in 49 deliveries courtesy seven boundaries and a solitary six.

He stitched together a quickfire 48-run stand with fellow opener Wriddhiman Saha as the veteran wicketkeeper struck five boundaries en route his 30 runs in 19 deliveries. The duo put up 48 runs for the first wicket and then Gill took over the majority of the mantle as he conveniently carried the Titans close to the target with only brief contributions from the rest of the batting order.

Playing at his home ground in Mohali, Gill was undeterred with anything that the Punjab team threw at him. He understood the game situation extremely well and hit the occasional boundary in addition to taking regular singles to keep the required run rate in check. The target was not steep enough to compel him into taking unnecessary risks and that worked in Gujarat’s favour as they were always ahead of the chase and never let Punjab’s skilful bowling get on top of them.

PBKS have a stellar death bowling unit in Kagiso Rabada, Arshdeep Singh and Sam Curran but the Titans did not keep too much for the backend of the innings and that helped them weather the storm unleashed on them by the pace trio with ease.

Earlier, PBKS crawled their way to 153, which was a pretty subpar score on the given track. Matt Short top-scored for them with 36 but the likes of Bhanuka Rajapaksa (20), Jitesh Sharma (25), Sam Curran (22) and Shahrukh Khan (22) all failed to convert their starts into good scores to lead Punjab to a more dominant total. The Titans unearthed an unusual star with the ball as pacer Mohit Sharma returned with figures of 4-0-18-2 on the night.

Mohit dismissed Jitesh and Curran and he plugged the flow of runs towards the death to ensure that his team had a very gettable score in sight to fetch two points on the night. For Punjab, skipper Shikhar Dhawan (8) and opener Prabhsimran Singh (0) had an off day with the bat and that reflected in their inability to post a challenging total on the board.

“To be very honest I would not appreciate for the game to go this deep. There was definitely a lot for us to learn from this game. That's the beauty of sports, it's never over till it's over,” remarked the winning captain Hardik Pandya in the aftermath of the game.

On the other hand, his counterpart Dhawan said, “We did not put many runs on the board. We have to rectify that thing going forward. Absolutely - if you see the number of dot balls, if a team plays 56 balls, you end up losing the game. Losing early wickets puts you on the back foot and we need to work on that.”

Punjab will next face the Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) at the Ekana Sports City on Saturday whereas the Titans will take on the Rajasthan Royals (RR) at the Narendra Modi Stadium on Sunday.