Magazine : 
GT vs SRH IPL 2023: Confident Gujarat Titans look to confirm playoff spot
The 27-run humbling at the hands of Mumbai Indians seems to have come just at the right time for defending champions Gujarat Titans, who host Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) in their final home match of the IPL league stage at the Narendra Modi Stadium. The Titans' impressive bowling line-up ran into a marauding Suryakumar Yadav at the Wankhede Stadium, with only leg spinner Rashid Khan (4/30) coming out unscathed.
In the batting department as well, barring Khan, no other player from Titans showed up. Khan smashed a 32-ball 79 to stave off a huge defeat and a subsequent dent to the net run-rate. This fact was reiterated by captain Hardik Pandya in an interview. "It felt like only Rashid Khan turned up from our team. He batted and bowled incredibly well. As a group overall we failed to perform. We didn't have clear plans and the bowlers didn't deliver," Pandya said.
A similar mistake is what the Titans would like to avoid as the IPL enters the business end. Pandya would like his premier pacers Mohammad Shami and Mohit Sharma along with Noor Ahmad to fire on all cylinders. The match against the deflated Sunrisers, who only have a mathematical chance of progressing, offers them an opportunity. A win would confirm Titans' place in the playoffs for the second successive season.
The Sunrisers, meanwhile, have been let down by the Indian batters in their camp, and it means they are staring at a third successive year where they haven't made the playoffs. None of the opening and middle order batters - Mayank Agarwal, Anmolpreet Singh, Abhishek Agarwal and Rahul Tripathi - have set this season of the IPL on fire.
And it has forced the South African duo of Aiden Markram and Heinrich Klassen to save the blushes in almost every match - something they have been able to do but at the cost of providing the necessary acceleration the team requires in the middle and death overs. It has been down to the extremely-talented Abdul Samad to provide the late innings impetus.
The bowling, too, has lacked bite. Medium-pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar is a shadow of the swing bowler he was in the past, and T Natarajan also has not returned with the same effect post his injury. SRH's spin department is too dependent on Mayank Markande, who has done fairly well but nothing extraordinary.
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