Mumbai: On Monday night against the Mumbai Indians, Rahul Tewatia walked in with 12.4 overs left in the Gujarat Titans’ run chase of 200 – a mountain to climb. For Tewatia, the finisher, this was uncharted territory.
It wasn’t as if he was batting out of position. No.6 is where he had batted the most and had a lot of his success. This happened to be one of those days when GT lost too many wickets too early. For the first time in three years since Shubman Gill, Sai Sudharsan and Jos Buttler came together to make a formidable top order, all of them had got out inside the Powerplay.
“The middle order was undoubtedly exposed today,” said GT’s batting coach, Matthew Hayden, at the press conference after the 99-run loss to MI. “The thing about the Powerplays is that you can’t win the match from there, especially in a run chase, but you can definitely lose it.”
“We shouldn’t be allowing, you know, Tiwu (Tewatia) or Shahrukh Khan or these guys lots of balls. That’s not their role. That’s not what they train for,” he added.
GT remains the only team in the league that continues to trust its old-school template. They want their top order to bat long and their five specialist bowlers comprising four fast bowlers, three of whom hit the deck, one swings and a high-class leg-spinner to do most of the heavy lifting.
From the outside, one could look at GT’s batting makeup as one with a structural flaw. In a format constantly picking up speed, even GT’s openers, who take fewer risks for their boundaries, would want to break away from their template every now and then. Both captain Gill and Sudharsan would want to add more layers – if not muscle – to their batting to boost their international prospects. In doing so, every now and then, the top order will fail. The question GT need to ask themselves is whether they have a middle order capable of course correcting when the top order fails to fire.
When Tewatia was sent in at No. 6, the minimum expectation from him would have been to rebuild the innings with hope that he could pull off one of his famous late accelerations. The left-hander rose to prominence with a couple of such innings in 2022, his first year at GT. To expect him to replicate what Tilak Varma achieved in the same match – finish with 101* in 45 balls after being 19 in 22 balls – would be unrealistic. Varma is a more accomplished batter, playing for the country, younger and has his best days ahead.
What Tewatia stands to offer, is to ace the highly specialised finishers’ role where he walks in with 2 to 4 overs to spare and gets the job done. Here too, Tewatia’s utility has been diminishing with his six-hitting prowess not comparable to others of his ilk. RCB’s Tim David for example has smacked 14 sixes and bats at SR of 204. MI’s Sherfane Rutherford, who GT let go has delivered 11 sixes and bats at SR of 194. Tewatia has managed a solitary maximum this year and his SR is a poor 117.
No longer used for his bowling in the Impact Player era, GT’s continued faith in Tewatia borders on rigidness in strategy. Like Tewatia, their other finisher Shahrukh Khan also hasn’t got many hits going (2 sixes, SR 140) so far.
Combine that with their No. 4 and 5 – Washington Sundar and Glenn Philips letting them down in crucial run chases against MI and RR has only added to the team’s frustrations.
It’s unlikely though that GT will panic. Under head coach Ashish Nehra, they enjoy an enviable record – a title, a runners-up finish, a third place and only one bad season where they ended 8th.
Questions have been asked about their middle order before. What they don’t have this year is the experience of that one seasoned international batter to navigate through troubled waters. Hardik Pandya (2022), David Miller (2023,24), Rutherford (2025) are all gone.
For days when the script goes wrong and it’s happened more than once already, GT’s middle order weakness could leave them vulnerable. They would expect more from Washington, given his international experience. Among the reserves is Kumar Kushagra, who played a significant role in Jharkhand’s Syed Mushtaq Ali trophy win.