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Gujarat Titans skipper Shubman Gill feels dropped catches made it hard for the hosts to steer clear towards the victory against Punjab Kings in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 match at the Narendra Modi Stadium here
GT had 200 on board to defend but their fielding woes which saw them drop a couple of catches eventually led to their downfall in the Thursday match. In the eleventh over, Azmatullah Omarzai dropped Sikandar Raza's catch. In the 17th over, veteran pacer Umesh Yadav dropped PBKS impact substitute Ashutosh Sharma's catch. At that time, Ashutosh had just scored three runs and in the next 14 balls, he went on to score 28 runs at a strike rate of 200 which turned out to be a game-changing knock for PBKS. "I think a couple of catches went down, never easy (to win) when you drop catches. Bowlers did a decent job, when the ball is coming onto the bat, it's difficult to defend, I wouldn't say we were short (on runs). The new ball was doing something. 200 was good enough. We were right in the game till about the 15th over. Always under pressure with dropped catches," Gill said after the match. Gill surprised everyone when he decided to hand the ball to uncapped pacer Darshan Nalkande and defend seven runs. The 24-year-old GT skipper backed the decision to give Darshan the final over and said, "With the way he's (Nalkande) bowled in the last match and with 7 runs to go, it was a no brainer for us. People who you haven't seen will come and play knocks like these and that's the beauty of IPL." Coming to the match, Gill struck the highest individual score of the IPL 2024 - 89* and Rahul Tewatia came at the end to play a short cameo of 23* in a mere 8 delivers to power GT to 199/4. In reply, Shashank Singh's (61*) blitz and Ashutosh's (31) rattled GT as they chased down the target and clinched a three-wicket victory for the Punjab Kings. (ANI)
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