After a double dosage of hat-tricks coming from the day, the game number 13 between the Gujarat Lions and Rising Pune Supergiants ended with Gujarat winning the game by 7 wickets at Saurashtra Cricket Stadium in Rajkot. With this win, GL not only marked their first victory in the tournament but also for the first time they could manage to take wickets comfortably including a hat-trick by Aussie man Andre Tye who was also nominated as the Man of the Match.
The Rising Pune Supergiants lost the toss and had to bat first and despite a patchy batting performance, they could put a fighting total of 171 runs on the board after losing 8 wickets. To chase the target of 172 runs, Brendon McCullum along with Dwayne Smith came to bat. Unlike the last two games, Gujarat had a blissful start as the opening pair added 94 runs for the first wicket. Gujarat Lions lost their first wicket in the 9th over in the form of Dwayne Smith who was dismissed for 47 by Shardul Thakur after playing 30 balls.
Not only Smith but McCullum too missed their half centuries as he was dismissed by Rahul Chahar at 49. The man at number 4, Dinesh Karthik, couldn’t perform up to the mark and was sent back to the pavilion by Imran Tahir after scoring just 3 runs off 5 balls.
Later, another healthy partnership brewed up between skipper Suresh Raina and Aron Finch and they added a total of 61 runs for the 4th wicket and landed up winning the game by 7 wickets. Finally, Gujarat won their first game in this tournament which took them to the 7th position in the points tally.
Earlier, the winning skipper Suresh Raina also won the toss and elected to bowl first. Pune men managed to score a total of 171 runs while debutant Andrew Tye took an extraordinary hat-trick which was the second one of this season. Tye dismissed Ankit Sharma, Manoj Tiwary and Shardul Thakur and became the first bowler to take a five-wicket haul in IPL 10. He also had the best bowling figures till date in the current season which is – 4 overs, 17 runs and 5 wickets.
