Shubman Gill's maiden IPL century may have been the highlight of Monday in the match between Gujarat Titans (GT) and Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), but it was head coach Ashish Nehra's anger that grabbed the headlines.
GT had a comfortable 34-run win over SRH, restricting the latter to 154 for nine. But, the final outcome was overshadowed by Nehra's visible dissapointment over his team's batting collapse during the final overs of the first innings.
GT lost Wriddhiman Saha's wicket in the first over of the match for a duck. Standing at 131/1 after 12 overs, the team went on to lose eight wickets for 57 runs in the last eight overs. Gill scored 77 from 39 balls in the 12th over but seemed to struggle to score remaining 23. So much that he took 17 balls for the same.
SRH picked six wickets in the last three overs, including four wickets in the last over. This upset the usually-calm-and-composed Nehra so much that he refused to applaud Gill's century. Though the players and coaching staff gave Gill a standing ovation, Nehra stayed put in his seat, much to the amazement of commentators Aakash Chopra and Saba Karim.
"Maybe Nehra felt that they should have at least got 210, or maybe even 225, because he didn't believe that Sunrisers Hyderabad will just turn up with the bat and lose the match," Jio Cinema's expert Aakash Chopra said in his innings analysis.
Nehra was later caught on camera having a heated conversation with captain Hardik Pandya. The duo had an animated conversation and GT director of cricket Vikram Solanki sas seen trying to calm Hardik down.
As for the SRH, Heinrich Klaasen became the top scorer with a 44-ball 64 while Mohammed Shami and Mohit Sharma bagged four wickets apiece for the hosts.
For SRH, seasoned seamer Bhuvneshwar finished with figures of 5/30, including taking three wickets in an excellent final over that pegged back GT.
