All-round Hardik Pandya leads Gujarat to maiden IPL title

The Gujarat Titans capped off their dream debut season with an emphatic victory in the IPL final against the Rajasthan Royals to become the seventh team in the Indian Premier League to lift the trophy. Gujarat skipper Hardik Pandya starred with bat and ball in the final for his side, picking up 3 for 14 and scoring 34 pivotal runs as the Titans beat the Royals by seven wickets in front of over 100,000 fans in Ahmedabad.

Sanju Samson chose to bat after winning just his third toss of the season, but the Royals were unable to get off to a good start on a slow used surface. Yashasvi Jaiswal took eight balls to score his first run and looked tentative at the crease, while Buttler dropped anchor early on due to the thin Rajasthan batting line-up, managing just 10 off 14 in the powerplay.

Jaiswal hit a couple of sixes against Mohammed Shami and Yash Dayal to get the innings going, but the youngster perished in the fourth over as he miscued a pull to Sai Kishore at square leg for 22. Rajasthan amassed 44 runs in the powerplay but struggled to increase their tempo once the field spread out. 

The scoring pressure forced the batters to take a riskier approach, and Sanju Samson fell while looking to slog a back of a length delivery from Hardik Pandya. The Gujarat captain troubled the batters with his consistent hard lengths at good speeds, bowling seven dot balls in a row to Devdutt Padikkal before picking up the key wickets of Jos Buttler and Shimron Hetmyer in his spell. Even the Titans spinners enjoyed plenty of success on this sluggish track, with Rashid Khan removing Devdutt Padikkal for 2 while left-arm spinner Sai Kishore dismissed R Ashwin and Trent Boult in his two overs.

Although Sai Kishore conceded 16 runs in the 18th over, the Royals were unable to get any sort of momentum at the death, scoring just ten in the final two overs to finish on 130 for nine.

Rajasthan had to make early inroads if they were to stand a chance of defending this total, and the new-ball duo of Trent Boult and Prasidh Krishna answered the call, dismissing Wriddhiman Saha and Matthew Wade inside the first five overs. The Royals should have had a third wicket in the powerplay, only for Yuzvendra Chahal to drop Shubman Gill at short mid-wicket in the first over.

Having played out a maiden against Boult in the powerplay, Gill made the most of his reprieve and carefully rebuilt the Gujarat innings alongside his skipper, Hardik Pandya. The pair carefully weathered the storm early on and added 63 for the third wicket as they targeted the off-spinner R Ashwin, who was taken for 15 runs in his first over. Yuzvendra Chahal dismissed Hardik with 45 still needed, but Shubman Gill and David Miller comfortably took the team home with 11 balls to spare to give the Titans their maiden IPL title in front of their home crowd.