The Rajasthan Royals (RR) failed to add the second IPL trophy to their cabinet as they lost the IPL 2022 final to the Gujarat Titans (GT) by 7 wickets on May 29 in Ahmedabad.
RR skipper Sanju Samson won the toss and chose to bat first. Coming down hard on them, the Titans restricted them to 130/9. GT achieved the target with ease and won the match by 7 wickets, with 11 balls remaining.
Speaking up about the mistakes committed by the Royals, legendary batter Sachin Tendulkar pointed out a bad mistake that led to the team’s unsuccessful attempt at lifting their second IPL title.
Tendulkar said that he was surprised by Sanju Samson’s decision to bat first after winning the toss. He further said that RR could have used the pitch to their advantage, given the fact that they played the second qualifier on the same ground.
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Sharing insights from the match in his YouTube video, Tendulkar said: "In the final, Rajasthan won the toss and surprisingly batted first. If you would have seen the previous match, Rajasthan bowled first and their bowlers had gotten an off the seam movement. But today, they batted first I don’t know why. Maybe in a big match, they wanted to bat first, but on this ground, Gujarat had never played. RR had the advantage of knowing how this wicket behaves. So I believe that had Rajasthan bowled first, the pressure would have been on Gujarat."
Sachin also expressed his opinion on Buttler's innings of 39 (35 balls) in the final. The Player of the Tournament started off well, but departed before he could start his power hitting, as he edged a delivery to keeper Saha off the bowling of Hardik.
Tendulkar said that the complete failure of RR’s top order to contribute in the final imposed humongous pressure on Buttler, which led to his dismissal.
"In the previous game, the way Buttler had batted, they (GT) thought will bat the same way he did in last match, so for that, they would need to put up a big total. But unfortunately for RR, Buttler was only getting support from Sanju Samson. Rest of the batter couldn't contribute as the team would have expected them to. You expect at least 50 percent of your batters to deliver but since that did not happen, Buttler was playing in a different manner. He was hoping for a phase where he could attack but it became too much for him to fight this battle alone," said Sachin.
