IPL 2025: Nicholas Pooran shows his class again with a blistering knock that ends GT’s four-match winning streak

Pooran defies the pitch

The struggle after his fall highlighted Nicholas Pooran’s amazing knock. LSG were 155/3 in 16th over at his exit, and took more than four overs to knock down the remaining 26, in the third ball of the final over.

Pooran’s bat swing is an uninhibited thing of beauty. He doesn’t do check-drives or chips or punches; he wallops them with his entire being. The bat is cocked almost above his head at its zenith and it blurs down furiously to smash the white ball and finishes the full arc, going back to where it started — the whole arc is done, almost.

Sai Kishore is a confident spinner who doesn’t mind staring down Hardik Pandya, as he did this IPL, and of late has been working on his brand of carrom ball that he says he has been training for three years. Unlike other carrom versions, this one is flipped down on the turf, and it sort of holds up as it shapes away a touch from a left-hander. He has had success with it this tourney and unsurprisingly, he went for it first ball from over the wicket. It was thrown back from the midwicket stands as Pooran belted it with ferocity, somehow adjusting to the slower pace off the turf, and Sai had a lovely bemused smile of surrender. The bowler shifted to around the stumps and tried to sling the ball with a lower side-arm action, away from Pooran. No luck. The white ball kept flying to the cow corner. 24 runs flooded in that over, and the game was all but over. Gujarat Titans tried to rally back by bringing in their pacers Mohammad Siraj and Prasidh Krishna. Pooran could only get 2 runs from 4 balls he faced and Prasidh also picked off the rampaging Aiden Markram at long-off.

Off the first ball of the 13th over, Siraj went for a slower bouncer, a perfectly fine option on this slow-ish track, but Pooran yet again timed his bat swing neatly to crash-land the ball over midwicket. Another slower one, later in the over, was guided over short third to bring up his fifty. Prasidh had another superb over next, giving just 3 runs to Pooran from four balls. But as much as it says about Prasidh’s form and skills (just 26 runs from his 4 overs), it also speaks of how well Pooran paced the knock; he knew he could afford to respect the bowler, not let his ego get in the way as the chase was in his control. And he slog-swept Washington Sundar next over to get the equation to 27 from 31 balls. “I wanted to be a household name. I wanted people to want to watch me bat. Whether it’s 7 o’clock in the night or 4 o’clock in the morning. I wanted to put smiles on people’s faces,” Pooran had once said. Thus far in the IPL he has been doing exactly that.

GT’s fielding woes

When Pooran fell, the game was intricately placed. There were two relatively new batsmen on a sluggish track. David Miller attempted a second run and was well short of the crease, but the wicketkeeper Jos Buttler had failed to control the ball as he lunged to whip off the bails – the ball was out of his gloves at impact. Miller fell later, but the required 7 runs in 8 balls were dealt without fuss by Ayush Badoni, who swept and slog-swept a four and a six off Kishore in the final over to finish off. Buttler had also dropped Rishabh Pant off Mohammad Siraj, to allow LSG to get off to a brisk start. Arshad Khan too had dropped Markram who was on 28 then finished with a 31-ball 58.

Sudharsan’s impressive fifty

T20 opening batsmen tend to have a sense of busyness about them; even someone as composed as Shubman Gill would often charge down the track to pacers. Not Sai Sudharsan. He bats like a classical Test batsman might, but someone who understands the demands of T20. He prefers to hang on the backfoot – about 65% of his shots were from that position, and either punches or drives, taking extra care to ping the gaps. He also possesses the ability to create his own room by collapsing his arms, as he did the very first ball of the game when he punched a Shardul Thakur angler to cover point. The result was another solid knock in the tournament that saw him, briefly, take the Orange Cap from Pooran, but dismissal on 56 was a turning point in the match.

Brief Scores: Gujarat Titans: 180 for 6 in 20 overs (Shubman Gill 60, Sai Sudharsan 56, Shardul Thakur 2/34) lost to Lucknow Super Giants: 186 for 4 in 19.3 overs (Nicholas Pooran 61, Aiden Markram 58, Prasidh Krishna 2/26).