Shimron Hetmyer’s blitzkrieg helped Rajasthan Royals finally break the jinx against defending champions Gujarat Titans on Sunday in IPL 2023 and the West Indian batter termed the team’s victory as a “bit of revenge”.
IPL 2023: Full coverage | Points table | Schedule | Results | Orange Cap | Purple Cap
GT had won all three matches against Rajasthan Royals last season including the IPL 2022 final. On Sunday, RR secured their first win on Gujarat Titans as Hetmyer smashed an unbeaten 26-ball 56 to guide his team to a 3-wicket win. Skipper Sanju Samson blasted 60 off 32 balls.
“I just really wanted to win against these (Gujarat) guys because they beat us three times (including the final) last year so it was a bit of revenge really,” the player of the match Hetmyer said.
“I practise these situations, it helps when you practise with that mindset of knowing we are few wickets down and chasing 100 with 8 overs to go. ”
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Gujarat Titans asked RR to chase down 178 for victory but Rajasthan were reduced to 55-4 before Samson and the Hetmyer turned things around.
Samson smashed a hat-trick of sixes against Rashid Khan before departing on 114/5. In his absence, Hetmyer along with Dhruv Jurel (18 of 10) and R Ashwin (10 off 3) took RR home.
RR skipper Samson spoke about his strategy of rotating bowlers that helped restrict Gujarat to 177/7.
“I think it was very important to rotate the bowlers. They were going hard at our spinners. After the timeout, they were playing some quality cricket shots and we needed to respect that but I’m very proud of our team for restricting them to a 170-odd score… We had a good matchup with Zampa on David Miller and almost got him but still it turned out well for us,” he said after the match.
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On Hetmyer, Samson said that the left-hander enjoys playing in difficult situations.
“I don’t think he likes easy situations. We don’t mind putting him in these situations.”
Gujarat Titans captain Hardik Pandya admitted that his team was short of the par score and he would have wanted them to score 10 runs more at least.
“A lot of matches left. We still need to play a lot of good cricket even if we had won today. I felt we were short some runs at the innings break. They bowled some good overs but we should have gone harder to put the game [out of reach] and get a 200 total. When I was watching outside, I did feel we were maybe 10 runs short,” Pandya said.
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