New Delhi: Shubman Gill and his opening partners Sai Sudarsan were pushing the Gujarat Titans to a 35th consecutive win that took them above chennai super kings Indian Premier League on Friday.
Captain Gill made 104 runs out of 55 balls while left hander Sudarsan got his first IPL century with a bang score of 103 from just 51 balls.
Only fifty deliveries by Gujarat’s two openers saw them amass one hundred runs and register a record joint-high IPL opening score of two hundred ten for no loss. One off the hook. In the eighteenth century both centurions removed.
Sudharsan was caught at extra cover having hit seven sixes and five fours, while Gill who smashed nine fours and six sixees went down in similar fashion. A slow ball deceives and is caught deep at mid-wicket.
“It makes things easier when you have 100000 people behind you. It’s freedom. We didn’t have any plans in our minds back when we were struggling out there. We just maximized the chance before us; We got over some friendship problems and had some good chats so even last year I used to bat with him,” said Gill after the game.
With an aggregate score of 231/3, GT faced a brief challenge; Moeen Ali was leading with (63) and Darryl Mitchell (56), but Chennai finally finished at 196/8.
“Definitely numbers-wise yes (GT’s best opening partner). Mohit bhai has done that for us over the past few years Even his bowling was like that last year wasn’t it? Anybody could have a couple of bad games this year as well, but they played really well in their last couple of matches, we felt like we were falling short by about ten fifteen – not in terms of games but NRR part.
Medium pacer Mohit Sharma was instrumental in taking three wickets including two half-centuries and finished with figures of 3/31.
The loss by CSK has made the playoff race even more intense. GT are just out but need to win their last two games by big margins to have a substantial effect on their net run rate while CSK remains at fourth and final playoff spot.