Advertisement
Ahmedabad:The 16th season of IPL started on Friday (March 31). In the first match of the tournament, defending champions Gujarat Titans defeated four-time champions Chennai Super Kings by five wickets. With this win at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, Gujarat continued their unbeaten campaign against Chennai. This is his third consecutive win over CSK. So far Gujarat has not been defeated.
Batting first in this match, CSK scored 178 runs losing 7 wickets. Ruturaj Gaikwad played an excellent inning of 92 runs from CSK. At the same time, 23 runs came off the bat of Moin Ali. Apart from this, MS Dhoni played an unbeaten 14-run innings in the end. While talking about Gujarat, Mohammed Shami, Alzarri Joseph and Rashid Khan took two wickets each from their side. Whereas Joshua Little got a wicket.
In response, Gujarat won the match by scoring 182 runs for five wickets in 19.2 overs. Rashid Khan was adjudged player of the match for scoring 10 runs off three balls as well as taking two wickets.
Shubman Gill took Gujarat close to victory by scoring 63 off 36 balls. He hit six fours and three sixes in his innings. Vijay Shankar scored 27 runs in 21 balls, Wriddhiman Saha scored 25 runs in 21 balls and Sai Sudarshan scored 22 runs in 17 balls. Captain Hardik Pandya was dismissed after scoring eight runs. Rahul Tewatia remained unbeaten on 15 off 14 balls and Rashid Khan scored 10 off three balls. Rajvardhan Hungergekar took three wickets for Chennai. At the same time, Ravindra Jadeja and Tushar Deshpande got one success each.
MS Dhoni:We all knew there will be dew. We could have done a bit more with the batsman ship. Ruturaj was brilliant, he times the ball well and he’s a pleasure to watch. The way he picks his options, it is pleasing to watch. I think it’s important for the youngsters to step in.
Hardik Pandya:Obviously very happy. We did put ourselves in a difficult situation, but Rahul and Rashid did very well. We were happy at the mid-innings because at one point they looked like getting 200, but we got those couple of wickets to pull things back. Having this Impact rule makes my job difficult. I have too many options, and because of this someone will bowl less.
Rashid Khan, Player of the Match:So happy to get this crucial Man of the Match. Will give me a lot of the energy for the rest of the competition. I try to do my best in all three formats and give it all in the practice sessions. The plan is hard to bowl to lefties, but the idea was to keep it tight, and I knew in my mind that if I keep it simple and get two wickets, we will be back in the game.
