Gujarat Titans (GT) captain Shubman Gill said his team's middle order was of no concern after defeating five-time winners Mumbai Indians (MI) in Ahmedabad in the ongoing IPL 2025, where the top order scored the majority of the runs.
GT defeated Mumbai Indians by 36 runs, taking advantage of the home conditions and black dirt pitch, scoring 196 for eight and restricting Hardik Pandya's squad to 160 for six.
GT's first three batters -- openers Sai Sudharsan (68) and Gill (38) and one-down batsman Jos Buttler (39) -- got the home team off to a good start, but the middle order, which included Shahrukh Khan (9), Sherfane Rutherford (18), Rahul Tewatia (0), and Rashid Khan (6), departed cheaply.
"I don't think so (middle order is a concern). Even in the previous match (vs Punjab Kings), I think, yes, it was a high-scoring game and we were chasing around 250 runs (243), but Rutherford scored around 48 runs (46 in the middle order). It's not a bad start. So, I don't think we are at all concerned about the middle order," said Gill in the post-match press conference.
GT's first win of the season came following a high-scoring loss to Punjab Kings. The captain said that other things went well for his team on Saturday, including a strong start on the power play.
"So many things... the way we started off in the power play. On this kind of a wicket, scoring close to 200 runs is a great confidence for us going into the second innings. I think the way we bowled in the power play, the way we bowled in the middle, everything went our way in this match.
I think each team has its own strengths and the way they like to play a certain type of a cricket. I think this kind of a wicket suits our batting and bowling overall... strength of our team more than on the red soil,” Gill said.
Shubman Gill also added that sometimes high-scoring games have a tendency to take the skill out of the match. Gill said the black soil pitch was not prepared keeping in mind the opposition.
"We just don't want all the games to be 240-250 runs. I feel if there are such high-scoring games, the skill out of cricket takes away from that. We decided to play on this wicket before we played the first match. There was not enough time for us to prepare a red soil wicket. So, it was decided before we played the first match that we're going to play this match on a black-soil wicket. It had nothing to do with the opposition,” Gill added.
(PTI inputs)
