There was an incredible moment during B Sai Sudharsan's third IPL hundred. He had made up his mind he was going to slog-sweep legspinner Suyash Sharma, had possibly not picked the wrong'un, but because he was watching the ball longer than others do, he could change his shot and loft him over wide long-off from the same slog-sweep position down on a knee.
But this ability, or this habit, to be able to watch the ball for longer than others might not be the best attribute.
This will sound harsh on a young batter who has his own journey to take, and if you think of this long enough, you will realise this is more a statement on his team rather than him. Nor is this a subjective statement. It is pure numbers.
Sai Sudharsan's was the slowest of the six centuries scored at IPL 2026, at the smallest and the quickest-scoring ground this year in night matches, and unsurprisingly, came in a losing cause.
This is not a Sudharsan problem, though. This is a Gujarat Titans (GT) problem.
At no point in their batting effort did GT look like they were giving their bowlers enough to defend in those conditions. Even if we were to argue a slowdown from overs 16 to 19 cost them 20 runs, it was still not par for the conditions. Not necessarily the conditions that prevailed when they batted, but conditions that existed during the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) chase. However, it is now accepted as part of life that conditions will get better for batting during the chase in night games and the only way to get around it is to bury the chasing side under a mountain of runs. There is only so much even a high-quality bowling attack such as GT's can do in places like Bengaluru and Mumbai.
GT are continuing to stick with methods that brought them success in their first two years, but the rest of the IPL sides have moved on. GT take the risk of not taking enough risks when they are batting in their outdated conviction that other sides are not good enough to expose this flaw in their game.
Since the start of the last IPL, GT have attacked the least percentage of deliveries and have had the highest control rate when they do attack. That tells you they are waiting for errors rather than trying to score off good balls as well, which is an area in which other teams have taken the lead. While GT are the second-quickest among all teams when they do choose to attack, they just don't attack enough.
GT's only response to changing times is for their batters to work harder and become even more efficient at risk-free acceleration. That, however, is not the optimum use of eight batters - thanks to the impact player rule - in just 20 overs. Their ability to have made it to the top four last year and still be in the reckoning despite playing the fewest percentage of attacking shots was a marvel, but there is a limit to where you can take your T20 batting unless you take risks.
Since the start of the last IPL, the top-two partnerships with the highest control rate and lowest attacking intent are GT's: 1. Sai Sudharsan and Shubman Gill, and 2. Jos Buttler and Gill. And these tend to be long partnerships, leaving others little time to build on strictly average starts and turn them into match-winning scores.
Teams generally tend to have their biggest, most fearsome hitters in the lower-middle order, but since the start of the last IPL, GT leave them only 24.57 balls per innings on an average. Punjab Kings (PBKS) lose their fourth wicket with 45.83 balls left on an average; RCB 39.07. Those two teams reached the final last year and are currently the top two this season.
GT will turn around and tell you they play the way they do for two reasons. One, their bowling is way better than that of the others and can afford the batters the luxury of not risking 120 all out when targeting 240 as the par score. Two, the GT Nos. 6 to 8 have scored only 276 runs since the last of the last IPL, 45% that of the next-poorest side on this metric.
How to give them more balls to face when they have such an abysmal record is a typical chicken-and-egg situation. Do they have these numbers because they each get to bat about five balls per innings? Or is their average innings so short that they have no choice to show what they can do?
In GT's case, they done the opposite of addressing the lower-middle order - if said lower-middle order is indeed the problem: they went ahead and released Sherfane Rutherford, who had a better strike rate than the openers despite having to start off in more difficult match situations and conditions. What chance adding another hitter who lets the top order to play more freely? Right now, though, it is just a self-fulfilling prophecy: we will not add firepower during the off-season and then we will have a reason for not taking enough risks with the bat because we don't have hitting prowess in the lower middle order.
All their efficiency and class in both batting and bowling are doing just enough to get them into situations like last year, when they could have won the title if they could have won three matches in a row against the best teams in the competition.
Now GT don't have the personnel to choose from to provide them the depth they need to be able to play a less conservative game. Until such time that they do have the batting depth to be able to attack throughout the innings, the GT batters are playing on the principle that whoever makes the fewest unforced errors will win.
The quality of hitting, the depth in batting line-ups, and indeed the nature of pitches have changed so much that costly errors are happening at a much lower rate than what captain Gill and coach Ashish Nehra want. They will soon realise that they are not getting enough out of this concept of playing low-risk cricket and waiting for the other side to make high-cost errors when playing high-risk shots. That's when they will have to build a better XI, which allows the players to maximise their scoring rate without worrying about getting out as much as they have to do now.
