Hardik Pandya’s Gujarat Titans suffered a narrow defeat as Sanju Samson’s Rajasthan Royals handed them a 3-wicket loss at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad last night.
Riding on the stellar knocks of David Miller and Shubman Gill, Gujarat was able to put up a decent 177 runs on the scoreboard as their top order collapsed early. Hardik Pandya too had a decent start to his innings but he failed to convert it into something big
Later, the GT bowlers had a great start early in the game with Mohammed Shami and Rashid Khan running rampant as the duo picked up 3 and 2 wickets respectively, however, they failed to stop RR batters from chasing down the target.
RR skipper Sanju Samson played a crucial knock of 60 runs to put his team in the line of victory and his knock did not go in vain as Shimron Hetmyer gave a perfect finish to the game with 3 wickets remaining.
Hardik Pandya Sledged Sanju Samson
During his knock, Hardik Pandya tried to get under his opposite number Samson’s skin. During the powerplay, as Mohammed Shami was returning to his bowling mark, Hardik quickly was in Samson’s ears saying a few words. Hardik’s actions didn’t particularly please Samson but he remained quiet and chose to respond back in style with his bat.
Samson played a stellar knock of 60 runs off 32 balls, which was laced with 3 fours and 6 sixes.
Meanwhile, the video of the incident has been going viral on the internet. Watch it here:
https://twitter.com/cricbaaz21/status/1647649249117753344?s=20
https://twitter.com/CricketwithRosh/status/1647670468848291840?s=20
Later, after the game, Pandya talked with the presenters as he discussed the outcome. Hardik felt like his team fell short of a few runs as they could have done a better job with the bat. He said:
“That’s the beauty about this game. The game is never over. That was the message to the boys as well. The game is never over until it’s over. So I think this is one more less for us. [Asked why he opted to bring in Noor as the Impact Sub instead of Josh Little] He’s someone who is difficult to pick as well. He actually bowled well. I don’t want to be harsh on him. He got us a big breakthrough which we wanted but I think the other bowlers did not execute. It’s a very long tournament.”
He added:
“Obviously all these losses remind you at the end of the tournament reminds you if you are not on the other side but it’s still a very long tournament. A lot of matches left. We still need to play a lot of good cricket even if we had won today. I felt we were short some runs at the innings break. They bowled some good overs but we should have gone harder to put the game [out of reach] and get a 200 total. When I was watching outside, I did feel we were maybe 10 runs short.”
