Gujarat Titans’ potent pace attack will have to stop marauding wonder boy Vaibhav Sooryavanshi and their traditional-minded top-order needs to fire against Rajasthan Royals in the Indian Premier League Qualifier 2 here on Friday.
In the previous outing between the two teams, Mohammed Siraj did get the better of Sooryavanshi with the short ball after being disdainfully slapped for a six. Kagiso Rabada too was at the receiving end of Sooryavanshi’s sizzling shot play.
Both Siraj and Rabada have provided the early breakthroughs through this tournament for GT, but the 15-year-old has raised the bar with an awe-inducing 97 off 29 balls in the Eliminator against Sunrisers Hyderabad. It is expected to be another belter of a surface here and Sooryavanshi would be looking to smash every ball out of the park, caring little for the bowler’s stature, like he punished Pat Cummins.
The batting sensation has been dismissed off a short ball multiple times and probably that is one area the GT bowlers would like to target judiciously. Royals, on a roll at the moment, rely heavily on Sooryavanshi and Jofra Archer. Both the X-factor players effectively won them the Eliminator against Sunrisers here.
Yashasvi Jaiswal has been totally overshadowed by Sooryavanshi’s sensational ball striking at the top of the order. Dhuv Jurel has done well at number three, but he has benefited from the head start provided by Sooryavanshi.
By captain Riyan Parag’s own admission, Royals should have reached 260 on Wednesday, but had an inexplicable collapse in the death overs. They would surely want to improve on their finishing skills.
Titans, on the other hand, get another shot at reaching the IPL final after getting a pasting at the hands of Royal Challengers Bengaluru. Titans bank heavily on their top three, Shubman Gill, Sai Sudharsan and Jos Buttler. If they don’t deliver, RR really don’t have the batting depth to turn it around.
If they end up conceding a 250-plus total like they did against RCB, it puts additional pressure on Gill and Sudharsan, who are highly consistent but can’t go hammer and tongs from ball one. Bowling has been their biggest strength, but it faltered big time in the death overs in Dharamsala where RCB skipper Rajat Patidar took the game away from Gill and Co.
Titans would also need a big improvement in the fielding department. The middle-order and lower-order do not inspire a lot of confidence but runs from Rahul Tewatia in the last game were among the few positives they would carry into Qualifier 2.
If the bowlers can repeat what they have been doing for a majority of this tournament, Titans will be the favourites to reach Sunday’s final, underlining their consistency, barring a bad day in Qualifier 1.
“Yeah, definitely, you know, this (Qualifier 1) is, like you said, one of those games that we’d like to forget and start over in Mohali,” Gill said ahead of the knockout game on home turf.
The match will start at 7.30 pm.
Also read: 15-yr-old Sooryavanshi breaks Gayle's IPL sixes record
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