Potential controversy kickstarted Qualifier 2 between Rajasthan Royals (RR) and Gujarat Titans (GT) as the match referee failed to hear the call and asked for a repeat. Shubman Gill, the losing captain, was not thrilled as both the sides wanted to bat first on a used surface that both sides expected to slow down.
Parag called heads on both occasions, but match referee Prakash Bhatt didn’t hear it during the first attempt and tried his best to not let the cameras see the outcome of the first toss. However, when Gill said he also wanted to bat first and that “unfortunately” the match referee didn’t hear the call, it was apparent that the first spin of the coin had resulted in tails.
Parag had no second thoughts batting first after having won the Eliminator on the same surface batting first against Sunrisers Hyderabad. Parag said his side had the bowling to exploit the slowing pitch later in the night. RR made no change to their winning combination.
Going with the conditions, GT made one change, bringing in tall left-arm spinner R Sai Kishore for the left-arm quick Kulwant Khejroliya, whose last match was his first T20 match in more than a year.
Rajasthan Royals 1 Yashasvi Jaiswal, 2 Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, 3 Dhruv Jurel (wk), 4 Riyan Parag (capt.), 5 Donovan Ferreira, 6 Dasun Shanaka, 7 Ravindra Jadeja, 8 Jofra Archer, 9 Nandre Burger, 10 Brijesh Sharma, 11 Yash Raj Punja
RR bench Shubham Dubey, Sushant Mishra, Aman Perala, Ravi Bishnoi, Tushar Deshpande
Gujarat Titans 1 Shubman Gill (capt.), 2 B Sai Sudharsan, 3 Jos Buttler (wk), 4 Jason Holder, 5 Washington Sundar, 6 Nishant Sindhu, 7 Rashid Khan, 8 R Sai Kishore, 9 Kagiso Rabada, 10 Prasidh Krishna, 11 Mohammed Siraj
GT bench Rahul Tewatia, Glenn Phillips, Anuj Rawat, Kumar Kushagra, Arshad Khan
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.espncricinfo.com ’
