The sea of yellow, rather No. 7 yellow jerseys, made the Narendra Modi Stadium look like the Chennai Super Kings’ home turf and opener Ruturaj Gaikwad’s savage attack promised to completely deflate defending champions Gujarat Titans in the IPL 2023 opener. That, however, was not to be and the four-time champions needed a last over cameo from crowd favourite MS Dhoni to set the hosts a target of 179. At the time of going to press, GT were 65-1 in six overs.
Earlier, Gaikwad (92, 50 balls, 4×4, 9x 6) was in terrific form, hitting the ball all around the massive ground. His two sixes on the offside off Hardik Pandya were outstanding shots of his innings that also sent warning signals to other rivals about his form in this IPL. With a nice carry, the Motera wicket suited Gaikwad’s strokeplay although Mohammed Shami with his length did not allow the right-handed opener much liberty, conceding only two runs in his first two overs. However, he and Moeen Ali targeted Hardik and Joshua Little to ramp up the scoring.
With Gaikwad hitting almost at a strike rate of 200, CSK looked like crossing 200 at one stage but after 12th over, they slowed down. IPL debutant Little bowled Ambati Rayudu in the 13th over and then Pandya and Alzarri Joseph checked the Chennai scoring rate. Joseph also dealt them two deadly blows, removing Gaikwad with a full toss and then accounting for Ravindra Jadeja in the 18th over.
Gaikwad, who survived a run out chance when Shubman Gill failed to hit the stumps, took Joseph to the cleaners, hitting him for three sixes over square leg in his first over to bring up his 50 in 23 balls. Pandya marshalled his resources well without panicking when Gaikwad’s pyrotechnics threatened to take game away from them. And he led from front in the middle overs as they conceded only 37 runs in five overs.
Also read: Gill sizzles as Gujarat Titans begin IPL title defence with five-wicket win over CSK
Wickets at regular intervals also helped Titans keep calm. Rashid Khan cleverly foxed the two left-handed English bowlers as he had both of them caught behind by Wriddhiman Saha with away going balls for Titans in the powerplay. Gujarati fans had turned up in big numbers (over 100,000) to watch Dhoni’s magic with the bat, what they thought could be one last time and he didn’t disappoint them by hitting a six and a boundary in the last over of the Chennai innings.
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