Gujarat Titans coach Ashish Nehra was at his jovial best during his team's face off against Kolkata Knight Riders at the Eden Gardens Stadium in Kolkata. While GT had succumbed to a last-ball defeat in the reverse fixture at their home thanks to Rinku Singh's heroics which saw him smash the final five ball of the match for five sixes when the equation read 28 to win off five balls to help KKR snatch a win from the jaws of defeat, this time around though, GT ended up winning the match by 7 wickets and 13 balls to spare.
During the dying stages of the the match a clip of Nehra having fun with his old mate and presenter Murali Kartik was shown on the big screen. The incident had actually happened before the start of the match when play had been delayed due to rain with the ex-India pacer jokingly hitting the former India spinner. Kartik seemed in some pain and even fell down. However, after seeing the video on the giant screen, Nehra was once again left in splits. The video of the same has surfaced on social media.
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Meanwhile, GT's win has taken them to the top of the points table in IPL 2023. They now have 12 points from 8 matches and are ahead of three teams with 10 points from 8 games.
GT won the toss in what was scheduled to be a 03:30 pm (IST) start but opted to bowl first because of the weather condition. Rain delayed the start of the match but no overs were lost. Bowling first, GT conceded 179 largely because of the efforts of Rahmanullah Gurbaz (81 off 39) and Andre Russell (34 off 19).
In response, Gujarat had a couple of decent partnerships but the wickets of Hardik Pandya and Shubman Gill in successive overs slightly opened the door for KKR. However, they were not able to make the most of it with Vijay Shankar (51* off 24) and David Miller (32* off 18) finishing the things in style for the defending champions.GT