By Prakash Nair 
Ahmedabad, May 12: Right. So that happened. GT are sitting at the top of the IPL 2026 table tonight, and if you watched what unfolded at the Narendra Modi Stadium over the last few hours, you would understand why this result felt almost inevitable from about the third over of SRH’s chase.
GT won by 82 runs. Their largest winning margin in IPL history. Five wins in a row. The most explosive batting lineup in the competition, reduced to 86 all out in under 15 overs. The Ahmedabad fortress does it again.
This was not a thriller. It was not even close to one. It was a controlled, clinical, almost cold-blooded performance from a team that has figured out exactly what it is and what it needs to do to win cricket matches. SRH never got going. Not once. The chase was effectively dead before most people watching at home had settled into their sofas.
The GT Innings: Messier Than the Scoreline Suggests
Here is the thing about GT’s batting tonight it was not clean. Not at all.
Shubman Gill went for 5 off 7 balls. Jos Buttler followed for 7 off 11. Two overs done, GT at 34 for 2, and the two batters everyone came to watch were already back in the pavilion. On a surface that was clearly not the flat Ahmedabad highway people expected slower, stickier, with more in it for bowlers the innings could have gotten away from GT very quickly.
It did not, because Sai Sudharsan exists.
You watch him bat and it is almost deceptive how unspectacular it looks in the moment. No massive sixes off the first ball he faces. No dramatic sweep shots to the fence. Just calm, sensible, utterly professional batting on a pitch where nothing was easy. He brought up his sixth fifty of the season in 38 balls. Sixth. In one season. That number deserves more attention than it gets.
Nishant Sindhu chipped in with a useful 22 off 14 balls before Pat Cummins got him. Sudharsan eventually fell for 61 off 44 to Sakib Hussain, and at that point GT were in a slightly awkward position heading into the final stretch.
Then Washington Sundar happened.
What he did in those last few overs was genuinely worth watching twice. He scooped a yorker over short fine leg while falling backwards. Then, next ball, he fell to the ground again and somehow rolled his wrists to send a delivery over deep square leg for six. Thirty-three balls. Fifty runs. The crowd was delirious. The kind of innings that does not show up properly in a scorecard but completely changes the feel of a total.
Jason Holder added an unbeaten 11 off 10 to help GT close on 168 for 5.
Was 168 enough? On paper, against this SRH batting lineup, most people at half-time would have said probably not. It felt about 15 runs light of genuinely safe. Turned out it was about 82 runs too many.
The Collapse That Nobody Saw Coming And Yet, Somehow, Everyone Did
Mohammed Siraj bowled a wicket maiden in the very first over. Travis Head one of the most dangerous T20 openers on the planet top-edged a flick off his pads and Nishant Sindhu took the catch at deep backward point. Head let out a scream of agony as he walked off.
It has not been a great IPL for Head and that moment sort of summed up his season. All that talent, all that reputation, and yet this tournament has not quite clicked for him the way everyone assumed it would.
Kagiso Rabada then removed Abhishek Sharma for 6 off 4 balls the very next over. Both openers gone. Six runs on the board. The team chasing 169 against a quality bowling attack, already missing their two biggest match-winners.
It just kept getting worse. Ishan Kishan made 11 before Rabada got him too. Smaran Ravichandran scratched around for 9 off 15 before Rabada removed him as well. SRH crawled to 34 for 4 at the end of six overs.
Thirty-four for four. Needing 169. Against Rashid Khan waiting in the wings.
Rabada and Siraj had ripped the heart out of SRH’s batting lineup in those first six overs. The question hanging over the ground was a simple one how do you score above eight runs an over when you have already lost four wickets and the pitch is doing things? The answer, as it turned out, was that you cannot. Not tonight. Not against this attack.
Salil Arora gave it a go for 16 off 13 balls before Prasidh Krishna ended that. Jason Holder then got rid of Heinrich Klaasen the Orange Cap holder coming in for a deeply underwhelming 14 off 16 balls. Then Holder dismissed Nitish Kumar Reddy for 2 and Shivang Kumar for 4 in rapid succession.
Klaasen for 14. The man who has been carrying SRH’s season on his back, batting at number four in a chase that was already broken, making 14 off 16 balls against a team that had him exactly where they wanted him. That is what happens when you lose your top three for nothing. The best batter in the world cannot save an innings when he walks in at 56 for 5 and needs to outscore the required rate by himself.
Prasidh Krishna got Cummins for 19 off 9. Rashid Khan stumped Praful Hinge for 3 to finish it all off. SRH bundled out for 86 in 14.5 overs.
The ground erupted. GT’s bench erupted. And somewhere in the SRH dressing room, there are going to be some very difficult conversations tonight.
The Bowling Was Simply Outstanding
Credit where it is due GT’s bowling performance tonight was as good as anything we have seen in this IPL from any team.
Rabada took 3 wickets, Siraj got one, Holder finished with 3, Prasidh Krishna bagged 2 on his return to the side, and Rashid got the last one. Five bowlers contributed. Not one of them was expensive. Not one of them gave SRH a single over to breathe.
For the first time in IPL history, two bowlers Siraj and Rabada have bowled through the powerplay together in five consecutive games. That kind of consistency from your pace duo is extraordinarily rare and it is the engine behind everything GT have achieved in this five-match run.
And just to underline how thorough the evening was Jos Buttler made five dismissals behind the stumps, breaking the GT record for most dismissals by a keeper in an innings in the IPL. Records were being broken everywhere tonight, and not the kind SRH wanted to be part of.
Where Things Stand
GT move to the top of the IPL 2026 points table with an NRR of +0.551. They have now won five in a row. They have the best bowling attack in the competition. They are playing at home in the knockouts if they keep this up. And the manner of this win against SRH specifically, on a tricky surface, without their captain scoring a run tells you this is a deep, complete team and not just a side riding the form of two or three individuals.
SRH meanwhile are in real trouble. They need to win at least one of their next two games to confirm a top-four finish. The batting lineup that looked untouchable a fortnight ago has been exposed badly here. When the conditions were not in their favour and the top order failed, there was nobody left to rescue it. Klaasen cannot do everything alone.
As for Sai Sudharsan his 61-run knock has taken him past Klaasen to the top of the Orange Cap standings. Six fifties this season. Quiet, consistent, completely indispensable. He is not the most talked-about batter in this IPL but right now he might just be the most important one.
GT are top. Five in a row. And they look absolutely nothing like stopping.
Scorecard Summary
Gujarat Titans: 168/5 (20 overs)
| Batter | R | B | 4s | 6s | SR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shubman Gill (c) | 5 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 71.4 |
| B Sai Sudharsan | 61 | 44 | 6 | 2 | 138.6 |
| Jos Buttler (wk) | 7 | 11 | 1 | 0 | 63.6 |
| Nishant Sindhu | 22 | 14 | 2 | 1 | 157.1 |
| Washington Sundar | 50 | 32 | 3 | 3 | 156.2 |
| Jason Holder* | 11 | 10 | 1 | 0 | 110.0 |
| Extras | 12 | ||||
| Total | 168/5 | 120 |
Bowling:
| Bowler | O | R | W | Econ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Praful Hinge | 4 | 38 | 2 | 9.50 |
| Eshan Malinga | 4 | 36 | 0 | 9.00 |
| Pat Cummins (c) | 4 | 34 | 1 | 8.50 |
| Sakib Hussain | 4 | 31 | 1 | 7.75 |
| Nitish Kumar Reddy | 2 | 18 | 0 | 9.00 |
| Shivang Kumar | 2 | 11 | 0 | 5.50 |
Sunrisers Hyderabad: 86 all out (14.5 overs)
| Batter | R | B | SR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ishan Kishan (wk) | 11 | 7 | 157.1 |
| Salil Arora | 16 | 13 | 123.1 |
| Pat Cummins (c) | 19 | 9 | 211.1 |
Bowling:
| Bowler | O | R | W | Econ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kagiso Rabada | 4 | 21 | 3 | 5.25 |
| Jason Holder | 3 | 20 | 3 | 6.67 |
| Prasidh Krishna | 2 | 16 | 2 | 8.00 |
| Mohammed Siraj | 4 | 14 | 1 | 3.50 |
| Rashid Khan | 1.5 | 15 | 1 | 8.18 |
Result: Gujarat Titans won by 82 runs Player of the Match: Sai Sudharsan
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- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
