Table-toppers Gujarat Titans lost against the bottom of the table side Mumbai Indians in a thriller of a match last night at Brabourne. The result did not affect the positions of either team but still, it was a close contest in the end. Hardik Pandya won the toss and was elected to the field. Rohit Sharma and Ishan Kishan gave MI a flying start in the powerplay. Both of them showed some glimpse of their form as they put in a solid 74 run opening stand. At that stage, MI was looking strong to get a score around 200 but GT bowlers came back into the game strongly picking up 4 wickets in the next 4 overs.

Tim David’s 44 off 21 balls helped them get to a competitive 177. In reply GT openers Wriddhiman Saha and Shubman Gill gave their team the highest opening stand in this IPL for them putting up 106 together. In the end, MI bowlers delivered some class death bowling alongside brilliant fielding effort to restrict GT to 172 to win the match by five runs. Titans skipper Hardik Pandya looked disappointed after their second defeat in a row, saying two runouts cost them the game.

“On any day, we would take 9 off the last over. The two run-outs cost us the game. Think batters let us down. In T20s, you can’t lose back-to-back games,” the Gujarat skipper said at the post-match presentation on Friday.

“No blame games as we have cleared such games. We have made rookie mistakes which cost us this one. We played good cricket for 19.2 overs in our innings, one or two hits would have made a difference. We should not have let it come down to the last over,” said Pandya.

MI openers finally put in a show 

 After a series of consecutive failures, MI did not change its openers and stuck to Rohit Sharma and Ishan Kishan. Finally, the dup has performed against the best side in this year’s tournament scoring 74 together within 8^th over. Rohit smashed his highest score this season with a well made 43 off 28 deliveries, which included four boundaries and a six. MI’s record 15.25 CR buy Ishan Kishan also was on song. The Jharkhand wicket-keeper batsman smashed 45 off 29. However, it was a shame that neither of them reached the half-century mark.

 Saha and Gill gave GT their highest opening partnership

Gujarat has finally found themselves a solid opening pair in Wriddiman Saha and Shubman Gill. After a series of failures with the opening combination GT dropped Matthew Wade and replaced him with Bengal veteran Wriddhiman Saha. The 37-year-old is continued his great form scoring his 11^th IPL fifty. Gill had a brilliant start to the tournament with a couple of 80+ scores but since then his form has dipped. After 7 poor matches with the bat, he scored a well made 52 off 36 balls.

Brilliant death over bowling by Daniel Sams

 After their 106 run opening stand, GT looked quite comfortable chasing the total down but a couple of brilliant run-outs helped MI get back into the game. 9 runs were required from the last over but Daniel Sams bowled with ultimate versatility with his slower balls against well set David Miller to concede just 4 runs.