IPL 2025, GT vs SRH: Gill and Buttler sizzle as Titans outplay Sunrisers

Gujarat Titans’ Shubman Gill being greeted after his team won the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 cricket match against Sunrisers Hyderabad, in Ahmedabad, Friday, May 2, 2025.
| Photo Credit: PTI

An 87-run opening partnership between Shubman Gill (76, 38b, 10×4, 2×6) and Sai Sudharsan (48, 23b, 9×4), and Jos Buttler’s 37-ball 64 (3×4, 4×6), helped Gujarat Titans to a 38-run win versus Sunrisers Hyderabad in the ongoing IPL at the Narendra Modi stadium here on Friday.

If Neville Cardus watched the GT openers bat, he would have called their union ‘the midsummer night’s dream of T20 cricket.’ They made the viewer feel better about life having just watched them bat.

Gill, with a frugal flick of his wrists that seemed to turn on springs of the finest steel, exasperated cricket’s finest bowlers in Mohammed Shami and Pat Cummins – a flick for a six to backward square leg off the former, and a whip for a six to midwicket off the latter.

Twice in a row off Cummins, he played his cover drive, a thing of ethereal beauty that even Michelangelo would have painted him playing it.

Sai Sudharsan, on the other hand, slipped the ball through the fielders like sand through rocks. He hit four consecutive fours off Shami in the third over, the most gentle and reined-in of all fours being a delicate steer between the short third and backward point.

Together, they were persistent and proficient wooers – they set the hearts throbbing with eye-pleasing shots, including Sai Sudharsan’s on drive for a four off Harshal Patel.

It didn’t last well beyond the PowerPlay, though. Leg-spinner Zeeshan Ansari had Sai Sudharsan caught behind in the first over after the PowerPlay.

Gill was agonisingly run out. He was caught short by Harshal’s throw from short fine leg – keeper Klaasen deflected the ball onto the stumps.

Buttler, then, accelerated with abandon until the 19th over, ensuring as he so often does, that the tempo didn’t plunge. He brought out his signature ramp for a six off Shami, who ended with a terrible economy of 16. 

In the second innings, opener Abhishek Sharma made a riotous 74 (41b, 4×4, 6×6), but unsupported, he couldn’t drag his team past the finish line for its first-ever win at the venue. For GT, Ishant Sharma, went off the field, seemingly injured, in the 20th over that Sai Kishore completed.