IPL Qualifier 1 Play of the Day: When Shubman Gill's gamble backfired on Gujarat

15 minutes. 15 minutes of poor decision-making was enough to send Gujarat Titans out of the Indian Premier League 1st Qualifier on Tuesday. Playing at the HPCA Stadium in Dharamsala, Shubman Gill’s side lost the one-sided match by a mammoth margin of 92 runs.

In the 20-over game, it only took a few minor decisions for GT to end up on the wrong end of the stick. For those who didn’t watch the match, Shubman Gill’s Gujarat opted to bowl first in Dharamsala, a pitch that heavily favors the chasing team, and still ended up conceding 254 runs in the first innings. The last 5 overs of RCB’s innings yielded 104 runs which completely rattled the Titans.

Qualifier 1, RCB vs GT: Highlighting | Scorecard

Chasing a record number of IPL play-offs, Gujarat just couldn’t fight back and ended up bowled out for 162 runs, losing by 92 runss. GT, however, cost neither the batting failure nor the dismantling of the ball; it was a few decisions made by Shubman Gill and the GT management that brought doom to the side.

In today’s Indian Premier League match of the day, we take a deep dive into the thought process of the GT management as we look beyond the scoreboard to find the key moments where the fate of the game changed.

First of all, who on earth thought this was a good idea to give Kulwant Khejroliya his first match of IPL 2026 in Qualifier 1? Khejroliya, who was not picked in the IPL 2026 auction, was signed as an injury replacement for Prithvi Raj Yarra.

The left-armer bowled two overs and conceded 31 runs on Tuesday. His second over brought 28 for RCB in the 15th over. The 28-run over included two no-balls, four boundaries and a six, essentially setting up RCB’s charge in the death overs.

Kulwant was picked over GT Arshad Khan’s string pacer who has the ability to bowl at 145+ kmph. Khejroliya was anything but that.

If this was the first brain fade by GT management and Shubman, the second would be even worse.

By the 10th over of the match, the game was quite even in Dharamsala. Shubman Gill’s side won the toss, elected to bowl first and dismissed three players from the RCB line-up for 99 runs. Rashid Khan bowled 2 overs in just 8 runs which provided the perfect choke after the pacers had done their job in the first half of the game.

They went on a run, sure, but they managed to get rid of Venkatesh Iyer, Virat Kohli and Devdutt Padikkal. Gujarat Titans’ Rashid Khan gave them a good start with the ball in Qualifier 1. (Image: PTI)

Bowling against spin bashers Rajat Patidar and Krunal Pandya who played 3 and six balls respectively, Rashid did really well.

Shubman, fearing that Rashid would get hit a lot if he bowled his third at that point, pulled him away. In fact, it completely pulled any rewind.

Between the 11th and 15th overs, only Jason Holder, Prasidh Krishna and, as said above, Kulwant Khejroliya operated. And that’s the 15 minutes that cost GT the game.

Prasidh, bowled for the second time in the 14th over, saw two dropped catches: one a tough chance between Khejroliya and Buttler behind the keeper and the other by Kagiso Rabada in the deep.

Dropped catches and a few other errors in the field unsettled GT and they paid the price in the 15th over – 28 runs from Khejroliya.

In an attempt to avert the crisis, Shubman made the worst possible decision to bring back Rashid Khan against an absolutely in-form Patidar and Krunal who played a combined 47 balls.

Once again: when Rashid left the attack at 2-0-8-0, the batting duo played just 9 balls between them and scored a total of 6 runs. When Rashid finally returned, all hell broke loose and the duo added another 69 runs between them, facing a total of 41 balls.

Shubman’s panic resulted in exactly what you’d expect. Rashid Khan was taken to town by both batsmen for 21 runs in the 16th over and it was an absolute landslide from there. From the moment things were under control, with the required run rate hovering around 10 RPO, Shubman’s GT conceded 254.

Patidar remained unbeaten on 93 with a staggering 281. There was simply no chance of Shubman’s GT chasing 255 down.

Gujarat will now travel down from the hills to Chandigarh to face the winner of SunRisers Hyderabad and Rajasthan Royals who play the Eliminator on May 27. Gill, GT and their coaching staff will hope they never make such basic mistakes again.

– The end

Issued by:

Amar Panicker

Published on:

27 May 2026 07:52 IST