Ahmedabad (Gujarat) [India], June 1 (ANI): Following his side’s loss in the Indian Premier League (IPL) final, Gujarat Titans (GT) skipper Shubman Gill said that 180-190 could have been a winning total and reflected on what has been another great season for the franchise.
GT continued its fine run in the IPL, reaching its second final in five years, but could not make it two trophy wins as a failure of the team’s highly productive top-three batters, skipper Shubman Gill, Sai Sudharsan, and Jos Buttler put them on the back foot right from the start. While the GT bowlers gave an immense fight in the defence of 156 runs, the total was just not enough as Virat Kohli (75* in 42 balls, with nine fours and three sixes) was there to guide his side to a successful IPL title defence.
Speaking after the match, Gill said, “I think if we had gotten close to 180, 190, it would have been a good match. (On whether the surface was slow or two-paced) Honestly, not that much. You know, maybe a little bit. We have seen whenever we are playing, in the first three or four overs, there is a little bit of movement for the fast bowlers. We lost a couple of early wickets, and then we kind of lost the momentum in the middle; we could not really get going. But then we knew we were playing the finals. 150, 160, if we get a couple of early wickets in the powerplay, we are always in the game.”
Gill also regretted that the team “could not get over the line” and there are always room for improvement.
“The way we kept talking, kept pushing ourselves, kept challenging ourselves in different areas, and kept improving those 5 per cent factors. We could not get over the line, but there are always things that you could improve on. And even if we had won the trophy, there were still things that we felt as a group that we needed to work on,” he signed off.
Put to bat first by RCB, GT scored just 155/8 in 20 overs, with Washington Sundar (50* in 37 balls, with five fours) and Nishant Sindhu (20 in 18 balls, with three fours) being the only one to cross the 20-run mark. Rasikh Dar Salam (3/27), Bhuvneshwar Kumar (2/29) and Josh Hazlewood (2/37) took wickets regularly.
RCB started off well with a 62-run stand between Venkatesh Iyer (32 in 16 balls, with four boundaries and two sixes) and Virat Kohli. GT showed some fight, reducing RCB to 132/5 at one point, but Virat (75* in 42 balls, with nine fours and three sixes) guided RCB to a win with two overs left.
This is RCB’s second IPL title win and overall their fourth Indian franchise cricket trophy, including two Women’s Premier League (WPL) titles. (ANI)
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