‘You will get a tight slap from cricket…’: Sehwag slams Shubman Gill after GT beat PBKS

Gill played the winning hand with a half-century, scoring 67 off 49 balls, and guided Gujarat to 154-4 (19.5 overs) in reply to Punjab’s 153-8 (20 overs). The opener struck seven fours and a six to reach his half-century off 40 balls.

However, the legendary cricketer pointed out how Gill’s strike rate came down after a brisk start and suggested he should not think about reaching personal milestones and instead read the game according to situations.

“He scored 67 off 49 balls but when did he reach his fifty? He reached his fifty off maybe 41-42 balls so in 7-8 balls he has scored 17 more runs. The acceleration came there, after he had reached his fifty. If even that had not happened then GT would have chased maybe 17 instead off 7 in the last over,” Sehwag said on Cricbuzz.

Sehwag added that rather than focusing on achieving individual goals, players should begin to approach games according to the circumstances.

“You can’t think let me score a fifty and we will anyway win the match. This is cricket. The moment you think about your own performance (instead of the team), you will get a tight slap from cricket. You can’t think like that. If he had shown the same intent and played at close to a strike rate of 200 when he was nearing fifty then he could have reached his milestone a lot earlier and saved more deliveries for his team,” Sehwag added.

Later, Gill, too, admitted that he should have stayed till the end and should have finished the match.

“It got slower with the old ball. So we needed to get off to a good start in the powerplay. We lost a bit of momentum when Hardik bhai got out. It wasn’t a big score but it was important to rotate the strike and not have dot balls,” he said.

Opting to bowl, defending champions Gujarat Titans restricted Punjab Kings to 153 for eight and eventually defeated them by six wickets.