How unfancied Gujarat Titans have proven their doubters wrong
Having been widely derided for the squad they assembled at the auction, they now sit near the top of the IPL table
Rashid Khan, Lockie Ferguson and Mohammed Shami make Titans' bowling unit one of the strongest in IPL 2022. With the new ball, Titans have been incisive as well as frugal. Their powerplay strike rate of 15.4 is the best in the tournament and translates to 2.33 wickets on average in the first six overs. Their economy rate in this phase is 7.33, the second-best among the ten teams.
In IPL 2021, Shubman Gill had a strike rate of 118.90. This despite Brendon McCullum, his coach at Kolkata Knight Riders, insisting on the need for aggression. This season, though, Gill seems has found that extra gear while still maintaining his silken touch. He has scored 200 runs in six innings at a strike rate of 151.51. Among openers with at least 100 runs this season, only Prithvi Shaw, Jos Buttler and David Warner have scored at a quicker rate.
Five different Titans players have won the Player-of-the-Match award in their five wins: Shami against Lucknow Super Giants, Ferguson against Capitals, Gill against Punjab Kings, Pandya against Rajasthan Royals, and David Miller against Chennai Super Kings.
In T20, a single over can change the result of a game, and Titans have been on the right side of that equation on two occasions. In their game against Kings, Titans needed 13 from the last three balls. At that stage, ESPNcricinfo's Forecaster gave them a 6.85% chance of winning. A needless throw by Odean Smith made it 12 required from two balls, and Rahul Tewatia smashed back-to-back sixes to take Titans over the line.
Abhinav Manohar, who is playing his first IPL, might not have won games on his own, but he has played important cameos in almost every other match. Against Super Giants, when Titans needed 11 from the final over, he hit Avesh Khan for two fours off the first two balls to all but seal the game. Against Royals, he struck 43 off 28 balls, taking on Yuzvendra Chahal in the process and adding 86 for the fourth wicket with Pandya to set the platform for a big finish. In five innings so far, he has batted everywhere from No. 4 to No. 7, lending the team flexibility to adapt to various situations.
Hemant Brar is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo