IPL 2025: Gujarat Titans prove too hot for Mumbai Indians

Ahmedabad: There is a reason why Gujarat Titans invested in Prasidh Krishna (4-0-18-2) the bowler. The natural bounce he generates makes it difficult to hit him for boundaries, as Mumbai Indians found out the hard way on Saturday.
Prasidh’s armoury of cutters, good-length balls and slower balls made batting difficult for Tilak Varma, Suryakumar Yadav and Hardik Pandya. The Karnataka pacer accounted for Varma and Yadav, propelling his team to a 36-run win at the Narendra Modi Stadium on Saturday.
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After new ball bowler Mohammed Siraj castled Rohit Sharma (8) and Ryan Rickelton (6), Varma and Yadav stitched a 62-run stand. Yadav sent Siraj and Ishant Sharma to his favourite leg-side boundary before he swept left-arm spinner R Sai Kishore for a boundary and hit him over extra cover for a maximum.
However, Varma was far from fluent, and he was caught at deep midwicket by Rahul Tewatia. The promotion of impact player Robin Minz (3) failed as he ate up deliveries before being caught at short third man off Kishore.
Thereafter, Hardik Pandya (11 off 17, 1x4) and Yadav failed to connect to the pace of Krishna. While Gill caught Yadav at long-off, Rabada had Pandya caught at short third man. The rest of the innings just meandered off as Mumbai Indians reached 160/6.
Earlier, Pandya (4-0-29-2) stymied the partnership between Titans skipper Gill and opener Sai Sudharsan (63 off 41b, 4x4, 2x6). He did this by hitting the pitch hard with good-length deliveries and mixing slower deliveries in between, thereby cramping batters for room. His wily spell was backed by other bowlers, who kept the Titans to 196/8.
The first to feel the pressure of boundaryless overs bowled by Pandya and left-arm spinner Mitchell Santner was Gill (38 off 27b; 4x4, 1x6), who danced down the pitch to a short ball which he hit straight to Naman Dhir at deep square leg. It was left to Jos Buttler to do the attacking as Sudharsan kept the scoreboard ticking with old-school ones and twos.
Buttler (39 off 24b; 5x4, 1x6) hit Santner over long-on for a maximum before ramping him for a four off the next ball to get going. His dismissal pegged the Titans back as they scored 62/6 in the last six overs.