Gujarat Titans won by 9 wickets over Rajasthan Royals in the 48th match of the IPL 2023 at Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur on May 5. Rajasthan Royals won the toss and opted to bat first. They managed only 118 runs in 17.5 overs before getting all out. Sanju Samson top-scored with 30. Rashid Khan picked up 3 wickets for 14 runs as well.

While chasing, Wriddhiman Saha scored 41. Later Shubman Gill and Hardik Pandya sealed the deal with 36 and 39 respectively. Yuzvendra Chahal picked up the only wicket as well.

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Here is what the captains and the player of the match said after the game:

Rashid Khan, Player of the Match said as quoted by Cricbuzz: (On masking the googly) Nothing different, just making sure I don’t give any signals for the batters to pick me. I’m trying to minimize the difference between leg spin and googly, holding them the same way. I keep working on it in the nets, want to make it perfect. Sometimes I lose my lines, with my bowling if I can keep the consistency with line and length then I know the batters will have problems. I just keep it simple, try to understand what I do wrong in games. It is more to do with my line and length, I bowled a few bad balls and was punished. So I just look back and talk to the video analysts, and work on my pitch maps. (On mentoring Noor Ahmed) It makes it easier, we speak Pashto in the middle. Noor is happy that I’m with him and he’s always someone who listens and puts it the hard work. (On how many wrist spinners exist in Afghanistan) To be honest, more than 1000 now. I have been to a few academies and there are so many leg spinners. There were 250 of them after my first year of IPL. Now, I’ve been playing IPL for 6-7 years now, and there are so many in Afghanistan trying to copy me. I receive so many videos everyday of new leg spinners. I’m so happy to see Noor perform here, there are so many more like Qais Ahmed, Zahir Khan who haven’t got their opportunities in IPL but when they do they can perform really well.

Hardik Pandya, GT Captain said as quoted by Cricbuzz: I let Rashid handle the business with Noor. Nobody better to communicate. Not much I have to do, I only suggest on when to have a slip. They are very confident about what they want to do, we only have conversations when things aren’t going right. I feel Wriddhi is one of the best keepers, not easy to pick Rashid and Noor with their speeds. We are relaxed, doing our jobs and there are just a few chats that I or Ashu pa will have to pull up our socks when needed. I made some judgement errors in the last game, but today my job was half done by the time Shubman got out. I don’t shy away from accepting mistakes, accepting in key to succeed for me.

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Sanju Samson, RR skipper said as quoted by Cricbuzz: We had a very tough night, didn’t really have a good powerplay to start with and struggled against the spinners. Their bowlers were bowling good line and length and kept on taking some crucial wickets during middle overs and when that happens there is nothing much you can do. We have to check our to-do list and see if we are actually playing good cricket, we need to pull our socks up, couple of crucial games coming up and we are looking forward to win games in the next couple of weeks.

Wriddhiman Saha said as quoted by Cricbuzz: We set a benchmark last year and just continued from there. All our bowlers have been contributing which is always a good sign. The plan was to maximize in the powerplay and today I got some confidence after timing a few balls and after the powerplay it is just about rotating the strike. I try to move really late against Rashid and Noor because it is important to read their variations because the angle is really low.