By Prakash Nair 
Ahmedabad, May 12: When two teams are sitting on exactly the same points, same wins, same losses, and they have to play each other that is not just another IPL match. That is the tournament doing what it is supposed to do.
Gujarat Titans and Sunrisers Hyderabad. Tonight. Narendra Modi Stadium. Both on 14 points. Both in the top three. Both knowing that whoever loses here is going to spend the next week sweating about the playoffs.
This one has been coming.
GT Are Flying Right Now and It Shows
Four wins in a row. That is what Gujarat have put together heading into tonight, and the way they have been winning is almost more impressive than the wins themselves.
Take what they did to Rajasthan Royals in Jaipur three days ago. Gill walked out and just batted. Not flashy, not trying to be a hero. Just proper, clean cricket. He made 84 off 44 balls, Sudharsan made 55, and the two of them put on 118 together at the top before anyone had a chance to breathe. GT ended up posting 229.
That kind of opening partnership does something to a bowling attack. It does not just take runs off the board it takes the spirit out of the fielding side. By the time the lower order comes in, half the battle is already won.
Then Rajasthan started their chase and looked like they might actually have a go. They were ticking along. Jurel was looking dangerous. Then Rashid Khan came on, spun one past Jurel’s bat, knocked the stumps over, and that was it. Four wickets in the end. The chase fell apart.
This is what GT do right now. They do not always look like a great team. Sometimes the bowling concedes too much early. Sometimes the middle order does not really get tested. But at the exact moment the match needs someone to do something, someone does it. Rashid takes four. Rabada gets a key wicket. Gill and Sudharsan put on a hundred.
They are not a perfect team. But they are a team that keeps finding ways to win. At this stage of the tournament, that is the same thing.
SRH’s Batting Is Just Unfair, Really
There is no other way to say it. What Sunrisers Hyderabad have done with the bat this season is just unfair.
Klaasen has scored 494 runs this season. Abhishek Sharma has 475 at a strike rate of 210. Ishan Kishan has 409 at a strike rate of nearly 199. Three batters in the top five run-scorers of the entire tournament. All three hitting the ball like boundaries are going out of fashion.
Their last game against Punjab Kings on May 6 was a perfect example of what this team can do when everything is clicking. They posted 235 batting first and then defended it. Their bowlers took three Punjab wickets in the powerplay and never really let Punjab settle. Punjab’s Cooper Connolly scored a century and it still was not enough. That tells you everything you need to know about the kind of total SRH put up.
The one name that does not get enough credit in all of this is Nitish Kumar Reddy. People talk about Head, Abhishek, Klaasen and rightly so. But Nitish has quietly become someone completely different this season. He is bowling at close to 140kph now. And with the bat in the death overs, his strike rate is 217 second highest for any Indian batter in that phase this season. He is doing everything. All-rounders who actually all-round are rare. He is one of them right now.
The Elephant in the Room: SRH Have Never Won Here
Before we get carried away talking about Klaasen and Abhishek and how destructive SRH can be someone has to bring up the history.
SRH have played at the Narendra Modi Stadium four times. They have lost all four. Against GT specifically, the head-to-head is 5-1, with SRH’s only win coming back in 2022.
Now look, records are records. Teams change. Squads change. The SRH walking out tonight is nothing like the SRH that lost those games. But venue records in T20 cricket do not just happen by chance. They tend to reflect something real about the surface, the conditions, the way the match-ups play out at that ground.
And at this ground, GT’s bowling just works. Rashid Khan’s economy rate here at home is 6.9. He does not even need to take wickets to be effective. He just needs to tie things up in the middle overs while Rabada and Siraj do the damage at both ends. Against a team like SRH that needs momentum to be truly dangerous, that kind of control in the middle overs is a real problem.
SRH will need to find a way past this. They have the batting to do it. The question is whether they have the temperament and the tactics to handle what Ahmedabad and GT throw at them.
Toss, Pitch, Weather the Boring Stuff That Isn’t Really Boring
The pitch being used tonight is one that was last used in late April, and six of the last eight matches on this surface have been won by the team that batted first. So batting first looks like the smarter call going in.
But here is the complication: dew comes in around the 13th or 14th over of the second innings at this venue. Once dew arrives, bowling gets harder. Grips go. Spinners lose purchase. The ball slips out. And suddenly a 185 that looked par becomes a target that is very much chaseable.
Both captains will be wrestling with this. Shubman Gill will want to bat first and set a total. Pat Cummins will probably want to chase under dew. Whoever wins the toss has a genuine advantage, not just the usual coin-flip nonsense.
Weather is clear. Around 30 degrees at match time. No rain anywhere near Ahmedabad tonight. This game will finish without interruption.
The Match-Ups That Actually Matter
A few individual battles tonight could genuinely swing the result one way or the other.
Rabada versus Klaasen is the big one. Rabada has dismissed Klaasen three times in 30 balls across T20 cricket. Klaasen knows this. He will have thought about it. But Rabada will be coming at him hard, especially early. If Klaasen goes cheaply, SRH lose their anchor. If he survives and gets going, all bets are off.
On the other side, Cummins has a habit of getting Buttler out four times in T20s and may well target him with the new ball. Buttler is GT’s wild card with the bat. If he comes off, GT’s total balloons. If he does not, they lean even harder on Gill and Sudharsan.
Washington Sundar bowling to SRH’s left-handed top three in the powerplay will be fascinating to watch. Abhishek, Head, and Kishan all left-handers at the top. Washington can be tough to get away early when he is on a good length. If he picks up a wicket in that phase, the whole dynamic shifts.
And then there is the Rashid riddle. Great bowler. But against SRH specifically? Just two wickets in six innings at an economy of over nine. His former team knows him well. They have faced him enough times to have a read on him. Whether that knowledge still holds on this specific pitch, on this specific night, is one of the real unknowns going into the game.
What Is Actually at Stake
Win tonight and you go to 16 points. That is basically a playoff spot in the bank. The loser is not out, but they will be watching every other result for the next few days with a knot in their stomach.
For GT, winning here would mean five in a row. Against the most explosive batting lineup in the tournament. At home. That would be a serious achievement and would make them genuine contenders, not just a team that has hit some form at the right time.
For SRH, this is about proving something. They started this IPL looking like a side that had forgotten how to bowl. They lost three of their first four games and people were already writing them off. They have fought back hard. Six wins from their last seven games under Cummins. But a win here in a ground where they have never won, against a team in the form of their lives would be a different level of statement entirely.
Likely Playing XIs
Gujarat Titans: Shubman Gill (c), B Sai Sudharsan, Jos Buttler (wk), Washington Sundar, Jason Holder, Nishant Sindhu, Rahul Tewatia, Rashid Khan, Arshad Khan, Kagiso Rabada, Mohammed Siraj
Sunrisers Hyderabad: Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Ishan Kishan (wk), Heinrich Klaasen, Nitish Kumar Reddy, R Smaran, Salil Arora, Pat Cummins (c), Shivang Kumar, Harsh Dubey, Eshan Malinga
Both sides are coming off convincing wins and neither is likely to change a winning combination.
Toss at 7:00 PM IST. First ball at 7:30 PM IST. Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad.
One of them goes to the top tonight. The other goes home wondering what went wrong.
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- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
