On Friday Gujarat Titans were to face Punjab Kings in an exciting contest at Brabourne stadium, Mumbai. Gujarat Titans won the toss and decided to field first. Gujarat Titans’ captain Hardik Pandya came in to bowl in the powerplay today. He took the crucial wicket of Punjab Kings’ captain Mayank Agarwal in the second over to push Punjab on the backfoot. Jonny Bairstow was playing his first game of the season and got out early after hitting a couple of boundaries.
The next man in was Liam Livingstone, who took the PBKS team by storm. He played an explosive knock of 64 runs off 27 balls, including seven boundaries and four massive sixes. Punjab was looking for a total of 200+ as they had five wickets in hand and were playing at a score of 152 in 15 overs. It was the 16th over that brought Gujarat back in the game. Rashid Khan bowled a stunning over to send Livingstone and Shahrukh Khan back to the pavilion. His spell changed the game and gave Gujarat hope to fight back.
After Rashid’s over, Lockie Ferguson and Mohammed Shami bowled the next three overs brilliantly. Punjab scored 189/9 at the end of 20 overs, Rahul Chahar played an impressive cameo of 22 runs off 14 balls and scored crucial 16 runs in the last over bowled by Hardik Pandya to take team’s total to 189/9.
For Gujarat, debutant Darshan Nalkande took two crucial wickets of Jitesh Sharma and Odean Smith. Shami, Hardik Pandya, and Lockie Ferguson got one wicket each.
Gujarat Titans would take it as a massive positive to restrict PBKS under 200+ on a batting wicket at Brabourne and will look forward to using the powerplay wisely in the second innings.
