Prasidh Krishna hadn't played any IPL cricket since 2022. At one point, he seemed locked-in as a bowler India would turn to during the middle-overs of a white-ball game because he had pace, height, and an ability to hit the middle of the pitch hard and trouble batters with his natural variations. However, injuries forced him into the sidelines.
Playing his second game of IPL 2025, for a new franchise, Prasidh came on when Mumbai Indians (MI) were 97 for 2, needing 100 runs in the remaining 54 balls. "I was itching to bowl actually," he said at the post-match presentation. "It was the tenth over. I was just thinking I haven't really waited so long in a game, in a T20 game, before bowling but everything paid off.
"We were sitting on top and watching how the first innings went. We could kind of read that cutters into the wicket and balls into the wicket were doing well. So just had that in mind and whenever I got to bowl, the plan was to make sure I use the length.
"I just figured [slower balls] were working well. I didn't really want to test the speed gun or try and do anything different. I just wanted to keep things simple. Knowing what the scoreboard was, I knew every single over, every single ball was really important. Just tried to keep things simple."
Prasidh is not particularly known for his variations but here they worked so well that he bowled his four overs on the trot, picking up the wickets of MI's two top-scorers, Suryakumar Yadav for 48 off 28 and Tilak Varma for 39 off 36. He was named Player of the Match.
"I think he did more than pretty well," Prasidh's Gujarat Titans (GT) captain Shubman Gill said in the press conference. "He did a pretty amazing job for us to be able to come in like that in a pressure situation and I think he changed the game for us in the way he bowled. I think he gave around 14 runs [18] out of which I think a couple of boundaries that he got hit for came in the last over. In the first three overs he gave around six or seven runs. In a T20 game, when the opposition is chasing 200 [197 to win], you know the match is almost done."
Ahmedabad, GT's home ground, has two kinds of pitches - red soil and black soil. Gill and his team management chose to play this game on a black-soil pitch, which tends to be a little slower and lower than its red soil counterpart.
The Gujarat Titans fast bowler finished with 2 for 18 from his four overs
"I thought it was just good thinking of using home tactics [to] your advantage," Trent Boult, the MI quick, said in the press conference afterwards. "Obviously there should be an advantage for the home team. We understood the wicket, that was black soil, and we didn't adjust nicely enough.
"Obviously there's a difference. Wankhede is obviously typically red soil. Good tactics from the opposition. If you've got those options to do that, it obviously makes things… But I don't think we will be using that as an excuse. There are players in our team that have played all over the country on all different types of wickets, as well as the international players there. So, I don't want to say [anything] off the game tonight. They scrapped their way to a good total and they showed us how to bowl on that wicket. So credit to them."
Gill explained why GT did what they did.
"I think each team has their own strengths and the way they like to play certain type of cricket I think this kind of a wicket suits our batting and bowling and overall strength of our team more than on the red soil and I think the way the game is going, you know, we see 250 to 240 runs [being scored].
"We have to sometimes give that cushion for the bowlers so there's something in it for the bowlers and it's an equal game. We just don't want all the games to be, you know, 240 to 250 runs. I feel if there are such high-scoring games the skill out of cricket, it takes away from that."