Punjab Kings 200 for 7 (Shashank 61*, Noor 2-32) beat Gujarat Titans 199 for 4 (Gill 89, Rabada 2-44) by three wickets
Punjab Kings only had 9% chance of victory and 18 balls to beat the odds with the guy they seemed to have bought by mistake at the auction. Guess what happened next?
This is what happens when two players look for the best boundary option they have with every single ball. But the fact that they were both uncapped, that they had very little experience at this level of the game – Shashank had played 13 matches in the IPL, but batted in just eight of those and had a high score of 25 prior to this – and were coming up with the goods even against bowlers of the calibre of the Titans was incredible.
They waited for Mohit and Azmatullah’s variations – whether they were slower balls or short balls – and it wasn’t just that they were looking to slog ’em across the line. Shashank (previously) and Ashutosh (in the death) ramped fours over the keeper. It was nerveless. It was glorious. And by the end of it, Kings had conquered their sixth target of 200 or more, a men’s T20 record.
It is still early – only four matches – but Rashid Khan has an economy rate of 9.06, his worst in an IPL season. In this game, he was lined up twice by Jitesh Sharma, leaking back-to-back sixes in the 16th over. He has already been hit out of the park nine times in IPL 2024. That’s as many sixes as he’d given up across 14 matches in 2021 and 16 matches in 2020. Titans are turning to him a little more often now because they don’t have Mohammed Shami in the powerplay and the death and it seems like he is yet to cope with that extra responsibility. The Kings were in a squeeze at 70 for 4 in the ninth over and then 111 for 5 in the 13th over. Liam Livingstone was injured. Shikhar Dhawan, Jonny Bairstow and Sam Curran were out. Only Jitesh and some unknowns were left. This match should’ve been done but it wasn’t.
Six. The total number of boundary attempts made by Wriddhiman Saha and Kane Williamson from a combined 35 balls faced. Titans were a top-heavy line-up with David Miller out injured. That automatically puts pressure on their best batter and Shubman Gill could have cracked if not for the man coming out at No. 4 and flaying at everything that came his way. Sai Sudharsan looked for a boundary off 12 of the 19 balls he faced. He outscored Gill – 33 off 19 vs 20 off 13 – in a 53-run partnership that reset the game.
Gill faced only 10 balls in the powerplay. Even after 10 overs, he had only been on strike for 19 deliveries. He looked in glorious form but wasn’t getting opportunities to influence the game. External pressure could have made him take a risk too soon and end up back in the hut, but Sudharsan’s innings gave him chance to bat at his tempo, and that was only ever going to spell trouble for the opposition.
Gill made 89 off 48 batting well within himself. Even the most jaw-dropping shot of his innings was a simple consequence of seeing a length ball and knowing he can get under it. Kagiso Rabada, who is IPL royalty thanks to his strike rate of 14.8, the best out of everyone who has at least 100 wickets in this tournament, was launched straight down the ground for an effortless six. Gill thrived just by responding to what was coming down because nine times out of 10, he had the perfect one. He was in the zone, striking at 185.42 and combining it with a control percentage of 91.67. That is rare. Typically when you’re looking to go big, you end up with a few more mis-hits. It must feel like pretty small consolation, though, on a night where he watched his team lose from a winning position.
