When Gujarat Titans made their debut last year in the Indian Premier League (IPL), not many had given them a chance to even qualify for the playoffs forget winning the trophy. The team didn't have any big superstar apart from their skipper Hardik Pandya and Rashid Khan. But the team boasted some utlity T20 players who were utilised well by the team management and they delivered their best to win the trophy in their debut season. In IPL 2023 too, the Titans played like defending champions and topped the points table as well.
Meanwhile, they lost to Chennai Super Kings in the first qualifier on Tuesday (May 23). Along with the loss, one of their massive streaks also came to the end. Chasing a total of 173 runs, the Titans could only reach 157 runs and were all-out on the last ball of the innings. This is the first time that they were bundled out in the IPL since last season.
It was the 31st match for the Gujarat Titans in IPL and in the previous 30 outings, they never lost all 10 wickets in their innings. Hence, CSK became the first ever team to skittle the defending champions in an IPL innings. The last man to get out was Mohammed Shami who tried to smash the ball out of the ground only for Deepak Chahar to take a good catch.
Hardik Pandya was disappointed after the loss but was confident of the team doing well in the second qualifier. "I think we were quite spot-on (with the ball), but we made basic errors and that costed us the game. The kind of bowlers we had, I felt we conceded 15 extra runs. A lot of things we did right. We bowled a couple of soft balls in between. We were executing our plans and then in between we gave some runs. I don't think we need to look much into it. We have to play two days later, we have to play one more game to make sure we reach the final. Just focus on the things that we've done really well this season," he said.
