🏏 KOLKATA: A day after being appointed India's youngest Test captain since Sachin Tendulkar, Shubman Gill has been cornered into a position from where making the IPL final could become tricky for Gujarat Titans.
⚠️ Chennai Super Kings probably saved their best for the last but so spectacularly have Titans lost two matches in a row at home that they now run the risk of finishing fourth after leading the IPL points table for the bulk of the league phase.
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🚫 And that could effectively rob them of the chance to have two cracks at the final.
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📉 In three consecutive matches now Gujarat Titans have conceded 199, 235 and 230.
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🏟️ While they didn't lose any wicket in the chase against Delhi Capitals, the 33-run defeat against Lucknow Super Giants and the 83-run loss to CSK in Ahmedabad on Sunday has compromised their net run rate that now stands at 0.254, the worst among the top-four teams.
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🧠 The playoffs have been made, but winning the tournament from here could exact much more from Gill than it has in the tournament so far.
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🎯 And it has to start with their bowling, especially after how Ayush Mhatre (34 off 17 balls), Urvil Patel (37 off 19) and Dewald Brevis (57 off 23) toyed with it.
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🗣️ "I think the game pretty much went away from us in the Power play, we never really came back," said Gill after the match. "Chasing 230 is always a tricky target. Teams already eliminated have nothing to lose and they come out all guns blazing. We weren't able to stay calm under pressure and I think we gave in to pressure."
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🧾 Five out of six matches had been won batting first in Ahmedabad this season.
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✅ So, CSK electing to bat made perfect sense. The opening over from Mohammed Siraj went for six runs but Mhatre turned up the heat when he hammered left-arm seamer Arshad Khan for 6,6,4,4,6 in the second over, taking 28 runs off him.
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❌ Mhatre was soon caught by Siraj but Patel taking over the hitting meant CSK finished the powerplay at 68/1, their joint-highest score this season.
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😓 Like Mhatre, Patel too couldn't convert an extraordinary start as he holed out to extra cover trying to take on Sai Kishore.
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🧱 But thanks to Devon Conway playing anchor, CSK's innings never lost momentum.
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🕒 Conway reached his fifty in 34 balls, fairly quick by T20 standards but Brevis was batting at another level altogether.
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💥 Coming into bat in the 13th over, Brevis muscled Shahrukh Khan for a four down the ground before flat-batting Rashid Khan for a massive six.
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🚀 By the 15th over, CSK were 163/4, meaning they had added 95 runs in the middle overs.
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📊 "It's very important to control runs in the middle overs," said Gill. "If you are not going to do that it's going to be challenging. That's where we were lacking in the last two games."
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🔥 Once Brevis started his carnage in the death overs, it became even more difficult for Titans.
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🧨 Eight of his nine boundary hits came after the 15th over, allowing CSK to cruise to 230 and set Titans an asking rate of 11.5.
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⏳ That meant neither Gill nor Sai Sudharsan could take their time settling in.
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🎯 Gill leaned into a classical cover drive off Khaleel Ahmed in the second over before coming down the track and lifting An Kamboj over his head for six, was however caught off the ball, leaving Jos Buttler with unenviable task of keeping up the chase.
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😓 Six balls and Buttler hadn't got a boundary.
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💣 Pressure mounting, he came down the track and tried to slash a back of the length delivery from Ahmed but it took a top edge that was caught at deep point.
🧹 Sherfane Rutherford departed next over, meaning Titans were three down inside the Powerplay, something they have never faced in 12 out of 13 matches before Sunday.
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🏃♂️ Sudharsan fought with a 28-ball 41 but his and Shahrukh's dismissals in the 11th over saw Titans plunge to 86/5.
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🔄 To recover from that scenario was difficult, partly because the Titans' middle-order had rarely faced this conundrum before this week.
🔁 Twice in two games though this sequence of events has been repeated, and that doesn't bode well for Titans.
📋 Brief scores: CSK 230/5 (D Brevis 57, D Conway 52, P Krishna 2/22). GT 147 all out in 18.3 ovs (Sai Sudharsan 41, A Kamboj 3/13, N Ahmad 3/21). CSK won by 83 runs.
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