IPL 2025: Bowlers, Aiden Markram, Nicholas Pooran power LSG as GT’s four-match winning streak ends

Pooran defies the pitch

The struggle after his fall highlighted Nicholas Pooran’s amazing knock. LSG were 155 for 3 in 16th over at his exit, and took more than four overs to knock down the required 25, in the third ball of the final over.

Pooran’s bat swing is an uninhibited thing of beauty.

He doesn’t do check-drives or chips or punches; he wallops them with his entire being. The bat is cocked almost above his head at its zenith and it blurs down furiously to smash the white ball and finishes the full arc, going back to where it started — the whole arc is done, almost.

Sai Kishore is a confident spinner who doesn’t mind staring down Hardik Pandya, as he did this IPL, and of late has been working on his brand of carrom ball that he says he has been training for three years. Unlike other carrom versions, this one is flipped down on the turf, and it sort of holds up as it shapes away a touch from a left-hander. He has had success with it this tourney and unsurprisingly, he went for it first ball from over the wicket.

It was thrown back from the midwicket stands as Pooran belted it with ferociously, somehow adjusting to the slower pace off the turf, and Sai had a lovely bemused smile of surrender.

He shifted to around the stumps and tried to sling the ball with a lower side-arm action, away from Pooran. No luck. The white ball kept flying to the cow corner.

24 runs flooded in that over as LSG jumped from 90 for 1 in 9 overs to 114, and the game was all but over then.

Gujarat Titans tried to rally back by bringing in their pacers Mohammad Siraj and Prasidh Krishna – both have been in great form this tournament. It seemed to work as across two overs, one apiece from them, Pooran could only get 2 runs from 4 balls he faced and Prasidh also picked off the rampaging Aiden Markram at long-off.

Off the first ball of the 13th over, Siraj went for a slower bouncer, a perfectly fine option on this slow-ish track, but Pooran yet again timed his bat swing neatly to crash-land the ball over midwicket.

Another slower one, later in the over, was guided over short third to bring up his fifty. Prasidh had another superb over next, giving just 3 runs to Pooran from four balls. But as much as it says about Prasidh’s form and skills (just 26 runs from his 4 overs), it also speaks of how well Pooran paced the knock; he knew he could afford to respect the bowler, not let his ego get in the way as the chase was in his control. And he slog-swept Washington Sundar next over to get the equation to 27 from 31 balls.

“I wanted to be a household name. I wanted people to want to watch me bat. Whether it’s 7 o’clock in the night or 4 o’clock in the morning. I wanted to put smiles on people’s faces,” Pooran had once said. Thus far in the IPL he has been doing exactly that.

Buttler’s fielding woes

When Nicholas Pooran fell raising hopes for Gujarat Titans, the game was intricately placed. At one point it had slid to 23 from 22 balls, nothing outrageous, but there were two relatively new batsmen on a sluggish track. David Miller attempted a second run and was well short of the crease, but the wicketkeeper Jos Buttler had failed to control the ball as he lunged to whip off the bails – the ball was out of his gloves at impact. Miller fell later, but the required 7 runs in 8 balls were dealt without fuss by Ayush Badoni, who swept and slog-swept a four and a six off Kishore in the final over to finish off. Buttler had also dropped Rishabh Pant off Mohammad Siraj, who was incidentally the thrower this time in the Miller run-out episode, to allow LSG to get off to a brisk start. Arshad Khan too had dropped Aiden Markram who was on 28 then and ran away to a 31-ball 58.

Sudharsan’s impressive fifty

It’s his long legs that scale well over the stumps at stance that one first notices. Then, the compactness takes over the attention. T20 opening batsmen tend to have a sense of busyness about them; even someone as composed as Shubman Gill would often charge down the track to pacers. Not Sudharsan. He bats like a classical Test batsman might, but someone who understands the demands of T20.

He prefers to hang on the backfoot – about 65% of his shots were from that position, and either punches or drives, taking extra care to ping the gaps. He also possesses the ability to create his own room by collapsing his arms, as he did the very first ball of the game when he punched a Shardul Thakur angler to cover point.

When Akash Deep hurled one fuller, he drove it to the straight boundary. When the spinner Ravi Bishnoi, who was punched and pulled to boundaries, fired a short ball to try to surprise him in the 10th over, Sudharsan flat-batted it well clear of the long-off.

Finally, Bishnoi delivered a loopy slower googly well outside off and full at that. Sudharsan had to try leaning forward and he did that, but found no power or timing in his intended lofted hit, and was pouched at extra cover. The game turned, and how.

Brief Scores: Gujarat Titans: 180 for 6 in 20 overs (Shubman Gill 60, Sai Sudharsan 56, Sherfane Rutherford 22; Shardul Thakur 2/34, Ravi Bishnoi 2/36, Avesh Khan 1/32, Digvesh Rathi 1/30) lost to Lucknow Super Giants: 186 for 4 in 19.3 overs (Aiden Markram 58, Rishabh Pant 21, Nicholas Pooran 61, Ayush Badoni 28 not out; Prasidh Krishna 2/26).