‘No Hardik Pandya telling what to bat’: Former India star on why his absence is good for Gujarat Titans

Gujarat Titans got off to a bittersweet start in IPL 2024 as they ushered in a new era under the leadership of young opener Shubman Gill. The 2022 champions started the season with a six-run win over senior captain Hardik Pandya’s Mumbai Indians. However, their IPL 2023 final opponents Chennai Super Kings defeated them by 63 runs in Chepauk on Tuesday. Team GT scored only 143 runs and faced their biggest defeat while chasing a huge target of 207 runs against the likes of Ruturaj Gaikwad and others.

Ever since Hardik switched to MI, there have been discussions about Gill becoming GT captain. Recently, former India pacer S Sreesanth spoke openly about Gill and said Hardik’s absence was a blessing in disguise for GT.

“There is no Hardik in the Gujarat Titans team to tell the bowlers what pitch to bowl. Sometimes you need to give freedom to the bowlers to bowl. This time the captain is Gill and I am sure Ashish Nehra will say ‘let Sreesanth in Said FanCode: “They pitched the ball. The bowlers will also take responsibility for the young captain and sometimes, this is the advantage of a young captain. “

Against CSK, Gill failed to live up to expectations by scoring just 8 points off 5 balls and was subsequently dismissed by Deepak Chahar.

“When we hit the ball, they beat us and their execution was spot on. We backed ourselves up to get good points on the power play and once we didn’t, we were always playing catch-up. That’s unfortunate for us. In T20s you’ll always be able to talk about 10-15 runs here or there and at the end of the day, what matters is how many they got. On this wicket, we expect to chase 190-200. I think it was a good learning for the bowlers,” Gill said after the match.

“I think it’s better to do this early in the game than in the middle-late stages. We always expected to chase 190-200 and it was a very good wicket. It felt like we let ourselves down while batting. ( There’s a lot of new learning, new experiences and different things about captaincy. It’s exciting to captain a team like Gujarat Titans, we’ve reached the finals in the last few years and it’s very exciting,” he added.

GT will face Sunrisers Hyderabad in IPL 2024 on Sunday in Ahmedabad.