Mohali:
After losing to the current IPL champion Gujarat Titans by 6 wickets with 1 ball left, the Punjab Kings lost for the second time in a row. GT needed only 154 runs to win, but they needed 7 runs from six balls at one point. Then, a set by Shubman Gill was out on the second ball by Sam Curran, which tipped the scales just slightly in Punjab’s favor. But Rahul Tewatia hit a boundary on the second-to-last ball to score the winning runs and get Gujarat home.
The win was sealed by Tewatia’s scoop over a short, fine leg, which was part of his long-running fight with Punjab. He gave himself a chest punch to enjoy the close win, which moved GT to third in the points table.
“Nothing changes in a day.” I was given this job when I was with the Rajasthan Royals in 2020. When they gave me the part, everything became clear. If you’re batting sixth or seventh, you have 14 league games and will get to bat eight or nine times. If your team falls apart and you get to bat in the 10th or 11th over, that’s a different story. So you usually only get to bat on the 13th or 14th over. Tewatia said after the game, “I’ve been doing the same thing for the last three or four years.”
“I set goals for myself and play many “mock” matches. This helps me know when to take a chance and how to finish the match. Knowing the right time and the right player is the most important thing. You can’t finish all 10 out of 10 matches, but you will finish most of them, which is what GT has been doing since last season,” he said.
Tewatia has been Punjab’s worst fear before. During IPL 2020, Tewatia played for the Rajasthan Royals. He saw RR try to get 51 runs in 18 balls, which was a challenging task. That night, the left-handed batter hit Sheldron Cottrell for five sixes, which added up to 53 runs from 31 balls.
Last year, when Gujarat Titans and Punjab Kings played at Mumbai’s Brabourne Stadium, GT needed 18 runs in 6 balls. On the first ball, Gujarat lost a wicket (Hardik Pandya), just like on Thursday, and the stress started to rise. With only two balls left and 12 runs needed, Tewatia hit Odean Smith for two sixes. This was a miracle finish.
It should have been easy for the Gujarat Titans to catch the ball. But the Kings’ tight bowling slowed them down, and Harpreet Brar stopped the runs from coming in during the middle overs. GT could only score 55 runs between overs 6 and 15, which slowed down the pace set by the 56 runs scored in the powerplay. It meant that they had to score 43 runs in 30 balls.
“Targets like these can sometimes turn into games where only one side plays.” Wriddhiman Saha and Shubman Gill got the game going, but PBKS came back and bowled well in the middle overs. “They didn’t give up any fours for three or four overs,” said Tewatia, who is 29 years old.
“They deserve credit for bringing it back.” Near the end, it started to go backward, making it hard to hit when you wanted to. “But this is cricket—they did well to come back, but we finished the game with winning,” he said.
“When Shubman left and returned, he told me the ball was reversing slightly. So it was good that I got the news from a set batsman before I went in to play two or three balls. “So, knowing ahead of time that the ball would turn around helped me be ready,” Tewatia said. “I was thinking about two things. The leg side is more significant, and I thought I could take a couple, but I thought it was a little risky, and with two deliveries left, I thought that was a better shot. The ball was also going backward. I had faith in myself and made the shot.
This was the 11th time in 12 matches that the Titans won while playing second, and nine of those times were in the last over.
