IPL 2024: ‘Taking the game deep and keeping wickets in hand helped’ – Sai Sudharsan

Gujarat Titans batter Sai Sudharsan feels taking the game deep and keeping wickets in hand played a key role in their seven-wicket win against Sunrisers Hyderabad at the Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad on Sunday. SRH, who smashed the highest innings total (277) in the IPL history against MI in their previous match, was restricted to 162-8 by GT bowlers, courtesy of a fine bowling display from Mohit Sharma.

The right-arm pacer returned with figures of 3-25 in his quota of four overs as none of the SRH batters could go past the 30-run mark. But it was not a walk-in-the-park type of a run-chase for GT as they found themselves at 78-2 after 10 overs.

However, Sai Sudharsan and David Miller stitched together 64 runs for the third wicket partnership. While Sudharsan scored 45, Miller scored an unbeaten 44 to get his team over the line. The turning point in the run-chase came when Mayank Markande was taken for 24 runs in the 16th over by both left-handers.

“Definitely it was a difficult wicket to bat on, not so easy where you can go after every bowler in every over. It’s about choosing the right bowler, getting the maximum out of it and taking the games deep with wickets in hand,” said Sudharsan in the post-match press conference.

“It’s all about the situation, when the team needs more run rate, obviously we need to step up. But today, it was a different scenario, it was a different wicket. I felt taking the game deep and keeping wickets in hand helped us today.

“The wicket got a lot bit easier under the lights. And we also changed the momentum because the run-rate was going up as well. Playing against spinners got a bit easier and that helped us target the spinners as well. We were waiting for that one spin over, it was a conscious decision of taking down the spinner and it went our way, so grateful for that,” he said.

Muttiah Muralitharan, the spin bowling coach of SRH, also admitted that the 16th over made the difference. “The wicket was a little slow and low, and there was a little spin. We thought of getting close to 180-170, we missed out by 10-15 runs. They bowled really well and we couldn’t capitalise. Even 160 is a manageable total. We were in the game till the 15th over. The 16th over we had to take a gamble – because they had lost only three wickets and then we took a gamble bowling Mayank against two left handers. We knew they would go hard in that over and they might mis-time and we can get a wicket. It didn’t work.”

Gujarat Titans will next take on Punjab Kings at the Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad on Thursday.