Sai High for titans!

GT’s Sai Sudharsan (left) and David Miller during their 64-run stand v SRH in Ahmedabad yesterday. Pic/AFP

Gujarat Titans caught Sunrisers Hyderabad napping, but they couldn't have done it without their Impact Player, Sai Sudharsan, who mastered the conditions with sensible batting to guide the hosts to a seven-wicket win in the IPL on Sunday.

David Miller (44 not out, 27 balls, 4x4, 2x6, 162.96 strike rate) partnered Sudharsan (45, 36 balls, 4x4, 1x6, 125 strike rate) to add 64 runs in 42 balls for the third wicket. After Sudharsan's fall, Miller teamed up with Vijay Shankar, adding 30 more runs in 18 balls to seal the second win for the Titans.

Difficult pitch

"The wicket was difficult, and we had to pick and choose deliveries to play shots," Sudharsan said during the post-match media interaction."It was all about the situation today [Sunday]. So, we decided to take the game deep by playing with caution," he added.

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Sudharsan revealed that it was a conscious decision between him and Miller to attack Mayank Markande in the 16th over, which yielded 24 runs and eased the pressure on Gujarat. "We knew there was one over to be bowled by a spinner, and we decided to attack him," he revealed.

Earlier, the black soil square at the Narendra Modi Stadium hindered Sunrisers Hyderabad's intent to go bang bang like they did for their 200-plus scores in the previous two matches. At the end of the Powerplay (58 for 1), it looked like they were repeating their act. They had plenty of batsmen in their ranks to do that.

It was, however, not to be, as the Titans's bowlers successfully adopted the ‘bowl slow' strategy to strangle the Hyderabad batsmen. Eventually, the visitors huffed and puffed to reach 162, largely due to No. 7 batsman Abdul Samad (29, 14 balls, 3x4, 1x6, 207.14 strike rate).

SRH batsmen struggle

Samad was the highest scorer for Hyderabad along with Abhishek Sharma (29, 20 balls, 2x4, 2x6). The rest of the batsmen failed to counter the slow Gujarat bowlers as well as the slower deliveries.

Gujarat's golden boy Mohit Sharma once again derailed the opposition with his uncanny knack of bowling according to the pitch. He struck two vital blows in the last over through slower balls at around 96 kmph which dismissed Shahbaz Ahmed (22, 20 balls, 1x4, 1x6) and Washington Sundar off successive balls.

"Their [GT] bowlers bowled well, but we couldn't capitalise [on the conditions] while defending 162," Hyderabad's bowling coach Muttiah Muralitharan told reporters. "The wicket was slow and low with a bit of spin," he added. Replying to a question by mid-day about the 24-run 16th over by Markande which put Gujarat in the driver's seat, the Lankan great said: "We had to take that gamble, but it did not work out, and we lost momentum after that."

Brief scores
SRH 162-8 in 20 overs (A Samad 29, A Sharma 29; M Sharma 3-25) lost to GT 168-3 in 20 overs (S Sudharsan 45, D Miller 44', S Gill 36) by seven wickets