Last Sunday (May 21) in IPL 2023 the last league match was played between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Gujarat Titans. Gujarat Titans won this match. With this, the RCB team’s dream of reaching the playoffs was shattered. Shubman Gill was the hero of this Gujarat victory. Gill scored an unbeaten 104 off 52 balls. With the loss of Bangalore, the Mumbai Indians reached the playoffs.
After losing the toss RCB came out to bat first, once again Faf du Plessis and Virat Kohli got off to a great start. Both added 67 runs for the first wicket. Faf returned to the pavilion after scoring 28 runs in 19 balls with the help of 5 fours.
Following this, Glenn Maxwell hit a four and a six but was brought down by Rashid Khan. Then after some time Mahipal Lomror also came out after scoring a run.
Even after going down by three wickets for 85 runs, RCB failed to function at the pace of the runs. Michael Bracewell hit five fours. But he came out after scoring 26 runs. RCB lost the fourth wicket for 132 runs in the 14th. Immediately after this, Dinesh Karthik returned to the hall at nil.
When half the team returned to the 133rd pavilion, Kohli took over alone. Although, on the other hand, Anuj Rawat struggled even for singles for 19 overs, Kohli just kept playing shots all over the ground and scored his second consecutive century.
Kohli scored 101 runs off 61 balls with 13 fours and 1 one six. In the final over, Anuj Rawat hit a four and a six and crossed the score of 190. Rawat scored 23 runs off 15 balls. In this way RCB scored 197 runs for 5 wickets.
Chasing 198 runs, Wriddhiman Saha and Gill hit two fours each in the first three overs. Saha, who was worried about Mohammed Siraj, was finally dismissed in the third when Wayne Parnell took a brilliant one-handed catch in coverage.
Following this, Vijay Shankar hit Parnell with a four. Following this, Gujarat finished the power play at 56/1 with a long six over. As Shankar struggled to get his time against the spinners, Gill hit a six against Vaishak Vijayakumar. Following this, switching bats, Shankar clipped Harshal Patel for four runs, after which he hit Himanshu’s sweep between long and deep into the middle of the wicket and hit another four.
In this way, from the fourth to the 15th, Shubman Gill and Vijay Shankar dominated the RCB bowlers and kept playing shots all over the pitch. Meanwhile, Shubman completed his half century. Then Shankar also gave fifty. Shankar was dismissed for 53 runs off 35 balls with seven fours and two sixes. He was fired by Vijaykumar Vaishakh.
As the second wicket fell on the fifth ball of the 15 it looked as if RCB would now make a comeback. Something similar happened. Dasun Shanaka, who came in at number four, was also dismissed for zero. However, on the other hand, Shubman Gill’s bat did not take the name of stopping. Meanwhile, David Miller also returned to the arena for six races.
In the last 18 balls, Gujarat had to score 34 runs and the ball went to Siraj. Gill hit a six off Siraj’s first ball. The party then went completely towards Gujarat. However, Siraj came from behind on the next four balls and gave up just two runs. Now Gujarat had to score 25 runs from 13 balls, but Gill hit a six off the last ball. So there were only 19 runs left in 12 balls.
Opening Gill canceled out the whole match in the 19th. In this over from Harshal Patel, 11 runs came including a six. Now only eight runs were to be scored in the last over. Wayne Parnell first pitched a no-ball and then pitched another ball wide. Gill then completed the century by hitting a six from the free kick to give Gujarat victory.
