Matthew Hayden was one of the most devastating batsmen in world cricket during his playing career, but the current batting coach of Gujarat Titans would prefer the consistency of his three over the carnage of Vaibhav Sooryavanshi. Hayden made the comments during a press conference afterward Exciting victory for GT over RR in Jaipur on Saturday 9th May.
RR vs GT: MAIN | SCORECARD
during the game Sooryavanshi scored 36 runs off 16 balls to give RR an initial liftbut was dismissed in the third over. At the same time, Sai Sudharsan and Shubman Gill scored fifties to build a stand of 118 runs in 65 balls. Gill batted until the 17th over, scoring 84 off 44 balls.
Hayden said that while it was exciting to see a talent like Sooryavanshi and his blistering cameos, batting deep was very important in a 200-plus chase.
The GT batting coach lauded the trio of Gill, Sudharsan and Buttler for consistently hitting 150 in the tournament and playing Test and ODI cricket rather than letting themselves be swayed by the power of the explosive bat.
“Well, tonight was a good example of an exciting young talent in Vaibhav Sooryavanshi. He batted, got 30 runs for 300. But when you’re chasing 220, you have to bat longer and deeper. So the advantage we have is that we’re getting players like the top three you mentioned who are hitting 150.
“I’ll tell you as a batsman it’s really tough and they’ve been doing it for a long time, they’re constantly getting into the back half of the game, not just batting in the power bowl. They’re going through their fitness and ability to really play Test match cricket, and ODI cricket in particular.”
“So I like the fact that we’re building in innings. Tonight when we’re setting the target, which is a different challenge for us, we’ve had a number of totals in that range of 160. Which I’d back in our batting to do any day of the week, so tonight it was really nice to have that challenge against an X factor team like Hayden, he was important for us,” Rajasthan told us.
Gill has a strike rate of 160.41 this season while Buttler has 151.96. Sudharsan has 440 runs this season with a strike rate of 157.70.
The win pushed GT into second place, while RR slipped out of the top four.
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Published on:
10 May 2026 09:20 IST
