Rashid And Tewatia’s Heroics Propel Gujarat Titans To Last Ball Victory In IPL 2024
The partnership between Rahul Tewatia and Rashid Khan stole the show as Gujarat Titans scripted a remarkable twist to end the Rajasthan Royals’ winning streak in IPL 2024 showdown.
Shubman Gill initiated the chase, but it appeared as though the Royals had taken the upper hand—that is, until Rahul Tewatia and Rashid Khan joined the chase.
Rajasthan Royals 196 for 3 (Samson 68, Parag 76, Rashid 1-18) were defeated by Gujarat Titans 199 for 7 (Gill 72, Rashid 24*, Tewatia, 22, Kuldeep 3-41) by three wickets.
The Rajasthan Royals exerted nearly all of their effort to jump to the top of the IPL 2024 points standings, going 5-0. However, Rashid Khan did occur.
With just 18 wickets lost in his four overs, Rashid should have had at least one more, but for missed catches. The Gujarat Titans could have been chasing far more than 197 if he hadn’t put in the effort. That was a challenging request in and of itself, and when they lost their sixth wicket, it was reduced to 40 off 15 balls.
Who do you think entered then? Yes, that same guy again.
It demonstrated that if Rashid is at the crease, it’s never over—especially if Rahul Tewatia is on the other end. Avesh Khan bowled the final over with just four fielders on the boundary, cutting the Royals’ lead to 15 off the game’s over-rate penalty. Tewatia gave up his wicket at the danger end to go for a third that would have tied the score, but Rashid blasted two fours off the first three balls and returned to attack for the final ball.
Avesh went short and outside off with two to get and one ball left. The Titans had broken the Royals’ winning streak when Rashid, who has some of the strongest and most flexible wrists in cricket, unfurled them and cut the ball to the empty boundary beyond point.
Rashid Show Began With The Ball First
With a string of exciting off-side boundaries early on, Yashasvi Jaiswal looked to end his trend of poor scores, but he and Jos Buttler both fell inside the powerplay, leaving Royals 42 for 2.
In Rashid’s opening over, the sixth of the innings, Buttler fell, trying to drive inside-out but edging a sharply turning legbreak to slip. Rashid’s first delivery to him was kept low and beat him outside off, giving the Royals an early indication of how challenging it would be for them to score against Rashid.
Later in that over, or in his following over, Rashid had the opportunity to dismiss Riyan Parag when the Royals’ No. 4 reached away from his body and edged two legbreaks. But keeper Matthew Wade stopped him.
Sanju And Riyan Set Up A Big Target
While Noor Ahmad didn’t bowl with quite the same control of length, at times he looked every bit as menacing as his Afghan spin twin at the other end. When Noor went a bit too full or too far down the leg side, Parag seized the opportunity to slog-sweep him. That shot brought him three sixes and a four against the left-arm wristspinner. As the highlight of yet another outstanding performance, Parag smashed 33 off 17 against Noor to record his third fifty in five innings this season.
Early in their partnership, Sanju Samson didn’t have as much of the strike as Parag; he was on 29 off 20 when Parag scored his half-century off 34 balls. When he did manage to get on strike, though, he made a significant impression, showcasing his variety of strokes with two outstanding knocks off Spencer Johnson in the fifteenth over: two short balls, hammered outside of extra-cover for four, then flat-batted over long-on for six.
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Rashid was the one bowler that the third-wicket pair chose not to pursue. Samson scored five off six against him, and Parag scored 13 off 15. In his last over (16 balls), he scored five singles and a dot.
It was evident why the Royals played him in this manner. Despite losing early wickets, the Royals have not often used a hitter as their Impact substitution, with R Ashwin slated to bat at No. 7. They have always favored stacking their bowls, and by completing Rashid, they made sure they could do it once more: Making his IPL debut, Keshav Maharaj joined Ashwin and Yuzvendra Chahal in a potent spin attack.
Rashid’s quota completed, the Royals struck quickly, scoring 57 runs in their final four overs. Shimron Hetmyer, who hasn’t had much opportunity to play this season, clattered an unbeaten 13 off 5 as he and Samson scored 24 off the final eight balls of the innings after Parag fell in the 19th.
Kuldeep And Chahal Put Gujarat In Backfoot
During their powerplay, the Titans produced some exquisite blows (Sai Sudharsan uppercut Avesh for six, Shubman Gill blasted Maharaj inside-out over the cover boundary), but they lost wicket at 44 in less than eight overs.
Even their excellent overs weren’t turning into really big overs. For example, in the eighth over, Sudharsan hit two consecutive fours off Chahal, but Titans only managed 12 runs off the over and would have lost Sudharsan if Chahal hadn’t dropped a return catch.
The Titans needed 118 off the final 9.2 overs with seven wickets in hand, but it looked like they would not make it when Kuldeep Sen, playing his first match of the season, made a dramatic entrance by taking the wickets of Sudharsan, Wade, and Abhinav Manohar in the span of ten valid balls.
After hitting three fours in his first nine balls, Vijay Shankar displayed some initiative and creativity. However, he was sent out for failing to sweep off Chahal, and the Titans needed 86 going into their last six. Gill had not reached a boundary since the tenth over, sitting at 53 off 37.
At that moment, Gill shifted tactics, hitting Ashwin for two fours in the fifteenth over and two more fours to begin the sixteenth, releasing his arms to fully exploit Chahal’s line wide of off stump. Then, perhaps a little too early, Gill stepped out, and Chahal saw him coming and shot it even wider, a true wide, to have him stumped for 72 off 44. It seemed to be the deciding moment.
Then Comes Rashid and Tewatia
Titans needed 59 at the start of the final four, and their extra strength in the lineup—they had brought in T20 hitters Manohar and Shahrukh Khan for the first time this season—started to show. Shahrukh and Tewatia hit Ashwin for a six and two fours between them in his final over, the seventeenth, making the score 42 off of eighteen.
Trent Boult hasn’t been employed by the Royals at all during this portion of the game; instead, Avesh and Sandeep Sharma have been their primary death bowlers. Even though Boult gave up just eight in his two powerplay overs, the Royals decided not to deploy him in the latter stages of the game, relying instead on Avesh to fulfill his role and Sen to fill in for Sandeep.
In the 18th over, Avesh gave up just seven runs, but not before spearing in a full ball to trap Shahrukh leg before wicket while playing across it.
Sen’s 19th wicket turned the tide for the Royals, as Tewatia, Rashid, and extras combined to cut 20 off the 35 needed by the Titans. Short and angled over the left-handed Tewatia, the final ball of that over produced a stunning shot under pressure that was flat-batted gently over mid-off.
Titans now needed 15 points out of 6. In their fanciful 2022 season debut, this team—which consisted mostly of the same players—had three times accomplished last-over chases of 15 or more. Tewatia and Rashid, who finished second in their respective seasons in 2023 and 2021, were once again in the middle. Was there any chance the Titans wouldn’t prevail?
Gill’s Thought About Gujarat’s Successful Chase
In IPL cricket, Gujarat Titans are unquestionably the masters of the chase. They have emerged victorious from 16 out of 22 games in which they have batted first, frequently exhibiting remarkable comebacks. On a particular occasion, Wednesday night, Shubman Gill, their new captain, couldn’t resist sharing a casual remark about writing them off in the delightful afterglow.
On a pitch that appeared to be a little difficult to score runs on, the Titans had given up 196 runs. Sanju Samson, the captain of the Rajasthan Royals, stated that there was no dew and that the ball bounced on the lower side, making it more difficult to go under the ball and make huge shots. The par score, he indicated, was about 180.
As he explained how he and his squad approach a T20 chase, Gill stated, “We were targeting 45 in three overs and that is very much gettable.” “At the time, the thinking was that you only needed two hits in an over to score fifteen runs each over.
According to math, both batsmen must score 22 runs in nine balls. If you approach it that way, you’ll notice that it will take three hits in nine balls, and if one of them goes crazy, the match will end in two balls and three strikes. If there’s an additional batter there, [Impact sub] makes a difference. However, the mindset that needs to be changed to make things easier and simpler is the belief that 45 runs in three overs just requires two hits every over.”
Gill made 72 off 44 balls on his own. It was a magnificent innings, particularly the way he attacked the middle-overs bankers for the Royals, Yuzvendra Chahal and R Ashwin. When he fell in the 16th over while attempting to knock a third boundary in three balls against Chahal, the Titans captain appeared to be going it alone. He exited the field by smashing his bat into the ground. At that moment, the Titans, who had only won two of their previous five games, needed to score 64 runs off 28 balls.
Gill stated, “Very happy with the way Rashid [Khan] bhai and Rahul [Tewatia] bhai finished the game for us. I would have loved to finish the game [myself].” We played terrible cricket throughout the awful phase, which is why we lost, even though I felt we dominated more than 50% of the game in the last couple of games. We were somewhat down in this game, but we were there and about, and it’s always a wonderful feeling to win on the final ball.”
In the final over of the IPL, the Titans have chased down 15 or more runs four times (out of eight tries). After that, they left the opposing captain speechless.
“It’s really difficult to talk right now,” declared Samson, who finished with an undefeated 68 off 38. “When the captain loses a game and has to report where we actually lost, it’s the hardest job in the competition. After a few hours, when the intensity of the sorrow subsides, I might tell you the precise location of our loss.
“The Gujarat Titans deserve recognition for their bowling, batting, and fighting styles. I believed that a fighting score of about 180 was achievable when I was batting. Shimron Hetmyer’s dominance towards the conclusion of the innings and our total of 196, in my opinion, indicated that we had won on this track. I believe there wasn’t any dew. We should have won because the ground was low and rather dry. Our bowling lineup was adequate.”
