A brilliant all-round performance from the skipper Hardik Pandya and a bowling spell to remember from Lockie Ferguson led to the Gujarat Titans coming out victorious over the Rajasthan Royals at the D Y Patil stadium in the TATA IPL 2022 on Thursday.

With their fourth win of the season, Gujarat Titans find themselves leading the pack with 8 points on the table.

A scintillating batting display from Hardik Pandya who managed to score an unbeaten 87 off just 52 balls helped the Titans put up 192/4 on the board for Rajasthan to chase. Abhinav Manohar (43 off 28) and David Miller (31* off 14) also contributed to the impressive total produced by the side.

Rajasthan knew they had a tough task ahead of them chasing a score of almost 200. However, Jos Buttler started the innings on the front foot by scoring three consecutive boundaries against Indian bowler Mohammad Shami in the very first over and later went blazing against debutant Yash Dayal in the second over by scoring two boundaries and a six.

However, it didn’t all go to plan for them as Buttler’s batting partner Devdutt Padikkal went for a duck in the second over itself. Ravichandran Ashwin had been promoted up the batting order to help make a difference as well, but it wasn’t the case as the Indian all-rounder got out after getting just 8 runs for the team.

Buttler managed to keep the Rajasthan scoreboard ticking until the last over of the powerplay where he was dismissed by Lockie Ferguson after making 54 off 24 balls on a slow delivery. Hardik Pandya made things worse for them by sending Sanju Samson back to the pavilion on just 11 runs with a brilliant run out.

After the dismissal of Buttler and Samson, the Rajasthan team could not hold on to their momentum as Gujarat kept taking wickets at regular intervals throughout the innings. The bowling attack eventually restricted Rajasthan to  155/9 in the 20 overs and won the match by 37 runs.

The brilliant bowling attack included Lockie Ferguson (3/23) and Yash Dayal (3/40) who rose to the occasion and dismissed more than half of the batting lineup for Gujarat while Mohammed Shami (1/39) and skipper Hardik Pandya (1/18) also contributed with the ball.

(Inputs from IANS)