Lucknow: In a match that swayed one way and the other it was the Gujarat Titans who eventually beat the Lucknow Super Giants at the Bharat Ratna Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana Cricket Stadium in Lucknow on Saturday. After winning the toss and opting to bat first, GT scored 135/6. Hardik Pandya's half-century (66 off 50) and Wriddhiman Saha's 47 off 37 were the best performances with the bat for Gujarat.
But for the longest time in the run chase, it looked like their total might not be enough especially when LSG had scored 53 runs inside the powerplay but eventually Noor Ahmad's (2/18) spell opened the door for GT before some superb death bowling led by Mohit Sharma (2/17) and Mohammed Shami (0/18) sealed the deal for the defending champions.
With the kind of start they had got, LSG looked to set to win but GT kept believing in themselves and picked wickets including 4 in the final over to win the match. KL Rahul (68 off 61) and Krunal Pandya (23 off 23) even got chances when their catches were dropped but in the end Gujarat triumphed with GT's bowlers executing their plans to perfection in the final few overs, drying up the boundaries not conceding a single one in the last 7 overs before all of LSG batters' attempts to clear the fence went straight to the hands of the fielders.
At one stage, LSG seemed to be knocking on the doors of a win, needing 39 off 45 with nine wickets in hand. However, they still couldn't clinch the 2 points. The equation was down to 17 needed from 12 balls in the end and first Shami bowled an exceptional penultinate over which went for just 5 to give Mohit 12 runs to defend in the end. The experienced pacer who has represented India at the ICC Cricket World Cup in 2015, first conceded 2 before getting the wickets of a set Rahul and dangerous Marcus Stoinis off successive balls.
The next two balls batters got run out trying to come back for a second as a measure of deseperation to stay in contention but none of it worked on the day and LSG could only manage to reach 128/7. GT's victory means they now have 8 points along with Rajasthan, Lucknow and Chennai from 6 matches with LSG being the only one out of this lot to have played a game extra (7). The three teams though are ranked above GT owing to their net run rate with RR's +1.043 followed by LSG's +0.547 and CSK's +0.355. GT have a net run rate of +0.212.