Mumbai : Gujarat Titans beat Lucknow Super Giants by 62 runs in a low-scoring Indian Premier League match to enter the play-offs on Tuesday. Opting to bat, GT posted 144 for 4 with opener Shubman Gill top-scoring with a 63 not out off 49 balls while David Miller chipped in with 26. For LSG, Avesh Khan took two wickets for 26 runs while Mohsin Khan and Jason Holder got one each. Chasing the target, LSG were all out for 82 in 13.5 overs. Deepak Hooda top-scored for LSG with 27. For GT, Rashid Khan took four wickets for 24 runs while Yash Dayal and Ravisrinivasan Sai Kishore got two apiece.
Shubman Gill, MoM, said, Always pleasing when you’re there till the end and finish the game for your team. I didn’t expect the ball to seam as much at the start. It was nipping around, and then I expected the spinners to get some turn. I think they didn’t bowl up much. Had Krunal pitched it up, it would have been tougher. It helped us turn the singles over. Not a lot of people gave us a chance at the start, but great to qualify now. The ground was soft and I had a bit of back issues, but hopefully it would all be fine.
Hardik Pandya said, ‘Really, really proud of the boys. It is a great effort to qualify before the 14th game in this league. To be honest, in the last game, we kind of thought that the game was over before it was over. We were always under pressure in all the other games that we won, and we felt that we’d finish off the last game with the kind of batting we had. That was learning we took. We just wanted to be ruthless today, and relax post game. I rate Sai Kishore quite high as a left-arm spinner. Because of the kind of fast bowlers we had, it wasn’t possible to play him and Jayant Yadav.
Lucknow were a bit short in their lengths, and fuller lengths were working. Our bowlers did everything that we asked of them, and we ticked all boxes today. I always feel that if you lose a game like the one we lost in our last game, we win and lose games as a team. Yes, we did not do what we wanted to do. We messed it up, but we messed it up as a team. Everyone stood by each other, and we had a get-together post game and made sure the vibe was always there. We were still on second spot and that meant we were doing something right.’
KL Rahul, losing captain, said, ‘It looked like a tricky wicket, that’s how it’s played here for the last 2 or 3 games that we have played here. We knew it was a low-scoring game, we knew it was a tricky and challenging pitch, we bowled really well. Restricting a team under 150 on any pitch is commendable and the bowlers did their job. We should have batted a lot better. Some poor shot selections, a run-out didn’t help, good learning for us, hopefully we can learn from a loss like this.
Sometimes you need a little bit of a reminder to keep turning up every game and keep trying to do our best. These low totals, you want to make use of the powerplay. For me and Quinton, it was about getting the team off to a good start, not necessarily getting off to a 60-run powerplay but to get to at least 35 or 45 without losing too many wickets would have been an ideal. We knew the pitch was going to grip a bit and scoring runs after the powerplay might be a bit difficult. We took a couple of chances and that didn’t come off. We knew their spinners were going to be really difficult to score off. We have to find ways to score against good oppositions on tricky pitches. That’s something we need to learn and figure out.’
