After dominating several games in IPL 2025, Gujarat Titans (GT) were finally thrown in at the deep end by Mumbai Indians (MI) at the Wankhede on Tuesday.
GT had been riding on the form of their top three batters - Shubman Gill, B Sai Sudharsan and Jos Buttler - who had scored about 76% of the team's runs until this game. The three had taken all their innings deep, with two of them usually scoring well in tandem. And on four occasions, Buttler had even seen the innings through.
Until Tuesday, and some part of Wednesday, happened. Each of the three have now passed the 500-run mark (Gill and Buttler got there in this game) in IPL 2025 - which has never happened for a single team in a season before - but this was the first time in this IPL that none of the three got to 50. And also the first instance where all three had been dismissed within 15 overs.
GT's bowlers had again ensured that the task for the batters was below-par chase - of 156, later reduced to 147 off 19 overs - but this was the first time that GT's middle order had been left to fend for itself, to an extent. When Gill became the third man out, they needed 43 off 31. It's not an equation that would scare any middle order, but with wickets falling regularly, the rain coming and going, a moist pitch that made the ball zip around, GT's middle order had been exposed in a wildly see-sawing, low-scoring game.
Sherfane Rutherford had not batted since April 19. Shahrukh Khan had faced all of 43 balls in the season. Rahul Tewatia was averaging 9.33 from eight innings. Rashid Khan had faced just 11 deliveries. Gerald Coetzee had not batted in nearly four months. They made up Nos. 6 to 8.
But it was not all doom and gloom. Rutherford had hit some lusty blows earlier in the season, and when he joined a well-set Gill in the 12th over, GT still had to contend with two overs from Jasprit Bumrah and one from Trent Boult. So GT had to go after the other bowlers, who would bowl the remaining 30 of the 48 balls off which GT had to get 77.
The 17th over of the Gujarat Titans chase, bowled by Jasprit Bumrah, almost won the match for Mumbai Indians
As soon as Rutherford came on, though, Hardik Pandya one-upped GT's plans by bringing on offspinner Will Jacks for the left-hand batter, with MI ahead on the DLS equation at that stage. All of Jacks' five wickets this IPL have been of left-hand batters, a list glowing with the names of Nicholas Pooran, Rishabh Pant and Travis Head, among others. The dice was worth throwing, and the trick also worked for three balls, which Rutherford struggled to get bat on. The fourth was an edge, but it raced away for four, and Rutherford reacted with mighty inside-out swings to fetch ten more off the next two balls.
The equation was a more gettable 62 off 42 now. Was it the right time to bowl one of Bumrah's last two? It's a matter MI will ponder when they assess the loss, because when Hardik gave the ball to the inexperienced Ashwani Kumar instead, Rutherford smashed his short delivery for a six to put GT ahead of the par score by the time the over ended and the covers came on for the first rain interruption.
In the break of 25-odd minutes, Bumrah looked like he was itching to bowl. He was tossing the ball around in his hand, restlessly moving around to keep himself warm, and he rushed onto the field as soon as it was time to resume.
Do Mumbai Indians have a fallback option if they are forced to bowl Jasprit Bumrah's overs early?
Bumrah struck almost immediately. His movement off the pitch shattered Gill's stumps, and when Boult trapped Rutherford in the next over, the noise from the faithful Mumbai crowd would have rung in GT's ears. The match was far from over. It was 38 to win from 24 now, Boult had bowled out, and Hardik decided to go all-in and finish Bumrah's quota too. MI needed wickets and Hardik wanted to finish off GT's middle order before it was too late.
Shahrukh, however, was in no mood to see Bumrah off quietly. He took the gamble, and he succeeded, too. An over-pitched delivery outside off from Bumrah and Shahrukh hit it through the covers for four. Bumrah was not going to let this one pass without a classic riposte, though. He sent down a searing yorker that looked out of the syllabus for Shahrukh, and Bumrah followed it by shattering the stumps next ball when the batter missed with his wild heave.
Ashwani was back for the 18th, and nailed his yorker to trap Rashid lbw, and GT fell well behind the DLS par score again with only three runs coming off Ashwani's five balls. It was raining again, but not hard enough to take them off immediately. Coetzee then - perhaps not fully aware yet that he had killed two birds with one stone - hammered the last ball of Ashwani's over for four. That released some pressure by reducing the asking rate, and also made sure Tewatia would be on strike next over. But first, another, longer rain break with 24 needed off two overs.
Rahul Tewatia has hit ten of his 35 deliveries in IPL 2025 for fours or sixes
This was a period MI would not be proud of. Most of their players retired to the dressing room, and there emerged no clear candidate to bowl the last over once it became clear there wouldn't be time for two. No one could be seen warming up until the last minute, and there was no apparent burning desire like the GT players and coaches were exuding as the clock ticked towards the cut-off time. Tewatia had his pads on in the dugout throughout, head coach Ashish Nehra was either in the match officials' ears or almost wiring Tewatia's brain to prep him for the last over.
When it finally came down to 15 to win from six, Hardik made another contentious call, of bowling Deepak Chahar, a powerplay specialist, over himself.
If Tewatia was the ice-cool presence that smoked the first delivery right back for four, Coetzee's nerve-busting energy sent the ball crashing over the long-off boundary for six two balls later. Chahar overstepped next ball, and even though the two-required-from-three equation went down to the last ball, GT's thrilling win under pressure against a top-quality bowling attack, clinching the crunch moments in a game with sharp twists and turns, proved that their batting was not only about their top three.
They will also accept that their middle order's night was far from perfect in what was their 11th game, which could even act as the perfect wake-up call before the playoffs.