"No Hardik Pandya To Tell What To Bowl": Ex India Star On Why His Absence Is Good For Gujarat Titans

Gujarat Titans' new era under the captaincy of young opener Shubman Gill had a bittersweet beginning in IPL 2024. The 2022 champions began this season by defeating their old skipper Hardik Pandya's Mumbai Indians by six runs. However, their IPL 2023 final rivals Chennai Super Kings edged past them by 63 runs on Tuesday at Chepauk. Chasing a whopping target of 207 against Ruturaj Gaikwad and co, GT managed to score only 143 runs and faced their biggest defeat in terms of runs.

Ever-since Hardik switched to MI, there have been talks regarding Gill's role as a captain of GT. Recently, former India pacer S Sreesanth opened up about Gill and stated that the absence of Hardik is a blessing in disguise for GT.

"There is no Hardik in Gujarat Titans to tell the bowlers what to bowl. Sometimes you need to give the bowler that freedom to bowl. This time the captain is Gill, and I'm sure Ashish bhai (Ashish Nehra) will say 'let them bowl'. Bowlers will also take responsibility with a young captain and sometimes, this is the advantage of having a young captain," Sreesanth said on FanCode.

Against CSK, Gill failed to live up to expectations as he scored only 8 runs off 5 balls, before getting dismissed by Deepak Chahar.

"They outplayed us when we were batting, their execution was spot on. We backed ourselves to get a decent score in the powerplay and once we didn't, we were always playing catch-up. It was unfortunate for us. In T20 you can always talk about 10-15 runs here or there, end of the day it's about how much they got. On this wicket, we were expecting to chase 190-200. I think it's a great learning for the bowlers," Gill said after the match.

"I think it's better to have this kind of game early on in the tournament rather than in the middle or late. We always expected to chase 190-200, it was a really good wicket. Felt like we let ourselves down while batting. (On captaincy) Lot of new learnings, new experiences and different things. It's exciting to captain a team like Gujarat Titans, we've made it to the finals in the last couple of years so very exciting," he added.

GT will now be squaring off against Sunrisers Hyderabad in their IPL 2024 match on Sunday in Ahmedabad.