There was no secret to Gujarat Titans’ success last year. Their top three – Shubman Gill, Sai Sudharsan and Jos Buttler – did the heavy lifting of scoring most of the runs and the middle-order had nothing much to do. The only time when the top three failed, the Titans were knocked out of the tournament. This season in the Indian Premier League (IPL) so far, the GT middle-order has got more opportunities with their top three not being as dominant and they have not stepped up to the expectations.
The likes of Glenn Phillips, Shahrukh Khan and Rahul Tewatia have come under the scanner for their poor show so far in IPL 2026. Sudharsan hasn’t gotten going while Gill and Buttler have played a few brilliant knocks but haven’t been able to stamp their authority like last season. The result? GT have won and lost three each so far and are placed sixth in the points table.
In the game against Mumbai Indians on Monday, they lost their top three within just 4.4 overs in the 200-run chase and were skittled for just 100 runs in the 16th over. In the game, where the likes of Phillips, Shahrukh and Tewatia were at least expected to put up a fight, the trio could muster only 31 runs off 32 deliveries combined.ย
Only Washington Sundar was able to put up a kind of a fight, scoring 26 runs off 17 balls and GT’s batting coach Matthew Hayden, after the match, admitted that their middle-order was exposed in the clash. “The middle order was undoubtedly exposed today.ย The thing about the powerplays is that, you can’t win it from there, especially in a run chase, but you can definitely lose it. And we lost it in the powerplay,” Hayden said in the post-match press conference.
They are batting for impact, Hayden defends middle-order failures
However, Hayden came to the defence of the underperforming batters in the middle-order. He felt that the top three are putting pressure on the middle-order and reckoned that the likes of Shahrukh Khan and Tewatia must not be allowed to play a lot of balls. He also said that their roles are completely different and they don’t train to play so many balls in the nets either.
“We’re putting a lot of pressure on our middle order. When you look at the way that you go about the middle order, go about preparation, it’s vastly different to way the top three handle those preparations. They are batting for impact. You know, when you send Shahrukh Khan there – I don’t know the numbers – if you’re getting seven balls and you’re striking at 180, you’re having a hell of a season. See, those numbers seem ridiculous if you’re looking for aggregates and averages and all of those things
“We shouldn’t be allowing Rahul Tewatia or Shahrukh Khan lots of balls. That’s not their role. That’s not what they train for. You know, we are a very good thinking batting unit and an adaptive batting unit. And what that means is that they’ve got their roles and they play them and today they simply didn’t,” Hayden added.
Also Read