HYDERABAD — Skipper
Shubman Gill led by example with a classy half-century after Mohammed Siraj
bowled with fire in his belly to return excellent figures of 4/17 as Gujarat
Titans crushed Sunrisers Hyderabad by seven wickets in their IPL match here on
Sunday.
Sent at number four, Washington Sundar too showed his class
with a 29-ball 49 as GT registered their third win in four outings, even as SRH
suffered their fourth defeat in five matches.
The chase of 153 was completed with as many as 20 balls to
spare, with Gill making an unbeaten 61 off 43 balls.
Bowling first, GT restricted SHR to 152 for eight with
left-arm spinner R Sai Kishore (2/24) and seamer Prasidh Krishna (2/25) too
performing admirably on a slow surface.
Mohammed Shami (2/28) and Pat Cummins (1/26) brought SRH
back into the contest with their early strikes as GT found themselves at a
tricky 16 for two in the fourth over.
B Sai Sudharsan (5) could not keep his shot down and was
caught at square leg off Shami, and Cummins then dismissed Jos Buttler for a
three-ball duck with a back of a length delivery that nipped back in sharply,
and Heinrich Klaasen did the rest behind the stumps.
The two wickets gave SRH a glimmer of hope but skipper
Shubman Gill and Washington Sundar joined forces to stitch a third-wicket
partnership of 90 runs to pave the way for their team's win.
Helping the GT duo to get their innings up and running after
the early wobble was a horrendous sixth over from pacer Simarjeet Singh, who
conceded 20 runs to ease the pressure on the visitors.
Simarjeet was guilty of repeatedly bowling short and
Washington took full advantage of it by pulling and hooking him for two sixes
over fine leg after collecting two fours.
Gill was all class reaching his half-century in 36 balls
with the help of some delightful shots but Washington got out one short of what
would have been a well-deserved fifty.
A flurry of boundaries from Sherfane Rutherford (35 not out
off 16 balls) then helped GT finish the game with plenty to spare.
Earlier, Siraj dismissed struggling openers Travis Head and
Abhishek Sharma cheaply before coming back to add two more wickets to his
tally.
Head (8) had a fortuitous start as his edge off Siraj went
past the stumps for a boundary.
However, Siraj had the last laugh as the pacer got rid of
the danger man from Australia when the opener flicked one for Sai Sudharsan to
complete a smart diving catch at mid-wicket.
The crowd at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium found
their voice after a few boundaries.
Siraj, however, had other ideas as the pumped-up seamer sent
back Abhishek after the batter took the aerial route but failed to get the
timing right and was caught at mid-on.
This meant the SRH openers' struggles continued in this
edition of the IPL as the side reached 45 for two at the end of the power play.
Even as the visitors dominated proceedings at that stage,
they faced some anxious moments when Glenn Phillips got injured. After being
attended to by the physio, Phillips hobbled off the field.
Ishan Kishan (17) perished when he miscued a pull off a
Prasidh Krishna short ball to deep square leg where Ishant completed the catch.
The duo of Nitish Kumar Reddy (31 off 34 balls) and Klaasen
(27 off 19 balls) tried to revive SRH innings with a fifty-run stand for the
fourth wicket, a phase where GT got a few fours and a six by the South African
big-hitter against Rashid Khan.
But just when SRH looked like laying the foundation for a
respectable score, left-arm spinner Sai Kishore picked up the prized wicket of
Klaasen whose leg stump was disturbed as he rocked back to employ the pull
shot.
Reddy too perished while trying to smash Sai Kishore out of
the park, leaving SRH at 105 for five in the beginning of the 16th over.
