I think we could have chased better, and the game against CSK could have been much closer: Vijay Shankar

Vijay Shankar, a batter for the Gujarat Titans, talked about how upset he was after his team lost badly to the Chennai Super Kings CSK in Qualifier 1 of the IPL 2023 at M.A. Chidambaram Stadium. He thinks that the Gujarat Titans could have won the game if they had been smarter and more strategic while chasing. GT are very good at chasing, so he thinks that if they had been, they could have won.

The Gujarat Titans’ leader, Hardik Pandya, won the toss and told the CSK team to bat first. CSK was able to set the goal at 173 runs in 20 overs by batting first. In return, the team at the top of the table could only score a total of 157 runs during the run chase and lost badly to CSK by 15 runs. Before the 18th over, Vijay Shankar only got 14 runs off of 10 balls for GT.

Shankar said in the presentation after the game that they didn’t have a practical and strategic way of following. “I think we could have chased better,” he said. We could have made it a lot harder for them to win. I thought I could have figured it out, but I got a little better. I could have made a better plan for it. So, we learned a lot from that. I think we’ve won a lot of games by coming from behind, but this one was different.”

I thought CSK did a good job bowling in the middle overs. Vijay Shankar

“I think (CSK) did pretty well with their bowling in the middle overs. When racing, the middle overs are very important for any team. We dropped the ball. If not, we’d have lost by 15 runs. Things would have been different if there had been two people at bat. All you have to do is lose wickets at the wrong time. Maybe a combination of 20–30 runs in the middle of the game could have brought us closer to winning,” he said.

The current champion will now play the winner of the qualifier match between the Mumbai Indians and the Lucknow Super Giants on Friday at their home ground, Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, for Qualifier 2.