Watch cricket video highlights between Gujarat Titans vs Rajasthan Royals. Indian Premier League 2024 twenty fourth match, played at Jaipur.
The Rajasthan Royals used 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 might 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.
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 remaining. The Titans had broken the Royals’ winning streak when Rashid, who has some of the strongest and most flexible wrists in cricket, unfolded them and cut the ball to the empty boundary beyond point.
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 within 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 maintained low and beat him outside off, giving the Royals an early indication of how hard it would be for them to score against Rashid. Later in that over, or in his following over, Rashid had the opportunity to remove Riyan Parag when the Royals’ No. 4 stretched away from his body and edged two legbreaks. But keeper Matthew Wade stopped him.
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 stroke scored 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 had 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. Rashid was the one bowler that the third-wicket duo chose not to pursue. Samson scored five off six against him, while 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 play 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 assault. 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.
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 very huge 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 missed 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 spectacular 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 shown 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 further, a true wide, to have him stumped for 72 off 44. It appeared to be the deciding moment.
Titans needed 59 at the start of the last four, and their added 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 many 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?
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