GT and their season of promise ends up in smoke as their worst fears come to haunt them at the most important time.
GT and their season of promise disintegrate in face of familiar failings.
Even when the Gujarat Titans (GT) were winning, it was a concern since their top three players—B Sai Sudharsan, Shubman Gill, and Jos Buttler—scored nearly all of the runs. They suffered in their final two league games and, when it counted most, in the IPL 2025 Eliminator because the other batters were undercooked. Tom Moody described the Mumbai Indians (MI) defeat as a “void” and added that Sherfane Rutherford and Rahul Tewatia had not performed as expected.
In other words, they didn’t follow David Miller’s lead in 2022, when GT won the championship in their first season.
“Tewatia has always been that guy who’s come in in the last two, max three, overs and played a blinder. At a very crunch time, yes, but he’s never been one of those guys… for example, David Miller was the guy, he was the Rutherford. He would come in with six-seven overs to spare, build his innings nicely, and when he was set, he wasn’t missing a slot ball. There was no chance David Miller was going to miss a slot ball,” Varun Aaron said on ESPNcricinfo’s Time Out on the season where Miller scored 481 runs at an average of 68.71 and a strike rate of 142.72.
“He was that guy that year, and that’s why GT won that final. Because there were quite a few matches where the top order had set it up nicely for Miller; Miller would take it deep and finish it. This year, Rutherford has not been able to do that on more than two or three occasions.”
Perhaps Tewatia was a greater letdown. He was undefeated just four times and scored 99 runs from 59 balls in 12 innings, although he only struck one six and one four in his 11-ball innings in the Eliminator. Despite not getting much batting time, he and Rutherford have both scored runs swiftly this season. Usually, the GT top three left them with nothing to do, but on Friday, they had a chance when Rutherford entered with 6.2 overs remaining and Tewatia entered with 4.2 overs remaining. Together, they hit five fours and a six, causing GT to fall 20 short. The other middle-order batsman, M Shahrukh Khan, had only one excellent performance and batted just 100 balls in 11 innings.
“I sort of bag Rutherford with Tewatia. I think they both have similar roles. Slightly different players – one is more of a six-hitter than the other. But between them they faced 26 balls today, and hit one six. That, to me, just tells it all,” Moody said. “They are batting right at the back end of the innings, where the currency is boundaries. It’s either fours or sixes, it’s not ones and twos. Currency is boundaries, and that’s what they train for. And that was their moment to at least add three to that one, and that may have been the difference.”