Three losses in a row had left Sunrisers Hyderabad at last on the IPL 2025 points table and needing a win over third-ranked Gujarat Titans to keep their playoff hopes intact. They failed to close out victory at Uppal on Sunday, following another limp effort with the bat. 

Led by four wickets to Mohammed Siraj and two each to the wily pair of Prasidh Krishna and R Sai Kishore, GT kept the home team to 152/8 and chased their target in 16.4 overs to collect their third win. 

Siraj won the early exchanges, getting Travis Head caught at midwicket by Sai Sudarshan in the first over of the game, and in his third he added the wicket of Abhishek Sharma who chipped straight to mid-on. Siraj conceded 14 runs from his opening spell of three overs, which significantly curbed SRH’s instincts during the first six overs. Hyderabad scored 45 off the Powerplay overs, with just eight fours, and this left the middle order with plenty to do. 

The problem was, the batsmen didn’t seem to want to reassess their gameplan on a tacky surface, with the exception, to some extent, of Nitish Reddy. Ishan Kishan was duped into taking on a skidding bouncer from Krishna and mistimed a pull shot to long leg, and then it was the turn of Sai Kishore to weave a spell. 

Kishore knew exactly how to bowl on a pitch with low bounce. He tempted Heinrich Klaasen out of his crease and was hit for a boundary, but the immediate response snapped a dangerous innings on 27. Kishore hurried his pace, dragged back the length, and got that ball to skid under Klaasen’s bat to hit leg stump. Not too long after that dismissal, Kishore teased Reddy with a flighted delivery which the batsmen mistimed to long-on. 

Such street smarts are what is starting to separate GT’s bowling from other lineups. If GT can get Rashid Khan back to wicket-taking form and replace the struggling Ishant Sharma with a younger and fitter Indian pacer, they will become the bowling attack to fear in IPL 2025. 

Krishna returned to bowl well in the backend of SRH’s innings, outfoxing Kamindu Mendis by taking pace off the ball and ended with figures of 2/25 from his four. Siraj took two wickets in the penultimate over of the innings to finish with 4/17, but the weak link was Ishant who conceded 17 in the last over to nurse bruising figures of 0/53 from his quota. 

Gujarat’s chase was rocked twice inside four overs, as Sudarshan pulled Mohammed Shami to square leg for his second single-digit score since he made his IPL debut in 2022, and then when Pat Cummins found the edge of Jos Buttler’s bat. But the arrival of Washington Sundar for the first time this season, that too at No 4, alleviated all doubts over whether GT could chase 153. 

Sundar – in a start reminiscent of his attack on Cummins in the Gabba Test of 2021 – pirouetted to whip sixes off Simarjeet Singh and used his crease superbly to the spin of Zeeshan Ansari and Kamindu Mendis. This eased the load on his captain Shubman Gill, who collected his first half-century of the season off 36 deliveries and hunkered down to finish the job at hand once Washington departed on 49 off 29 deliveries to a terrific diving catch from Aniket Verma in the deep. 

Gill finished with 61 off 43 balls, and Sherfane Rutherford once again added his unique skills with 35 not out off 16 balls to finish the job for the loss of three wickets. 

Gill striking form turns this GT side into a more dangerous opponent, given their reliance on the top three before this match. If Sundar can keep chipping in as he did in this match, and Rutherford maintains his finishing skills, this team could be a serious IPL contender.