Saurabh Somani
This is not about what has gone wrong for Gujarat Titans in IPL 2024. That can be succinctly explained in three lines, without even mentioning their ex-captain. There is no Mohammed Shami. Rashid Khan is returning from surgery and has had the most un-Rashid like year in the IPL. And the top-order is collectively not putting up the runs it did in the last two years.
This is about what went right for them before this season. They came within a ball of winning consecutive IPL titles. Within a ball of joining the two most storied franchises – Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings – as the only ones to defend an IPL title. And they did it in their first two years, which was remarkable. More so because after the IPL 2022 mega auction, no one had given the Titans a hope of making the playoffs.
They had started the auction with one of the strongest cores: Hardik Pandya, Rashid Khan, Shubman Gill. By the end of the two-day affair, their batting looked a little bereft. Sai Sudharsan and Abhinav Manohar were unknown quantities at this level, but what raised everyone’s eyebrows were the purchases of Rahul Tewatia and David Miller. For anyone who has followed the IPL only from 2022, it would seem absurd that these two batters were looked at askance, because since they have been with the Titans, both have been superb.
That was not the case heading into the 2022 auction. Miller had endured a torrid time from 2016 to 2021 in the IPL, averaging 22.6 at a strike rate of less than 120. Tewatia had that magic moment in Sharjah in IPL 2020, but that had begun looking like a flash in the pan next year. In IPL 2021, Tewatia averaged 15.50 and struck at 105, despite playing a full 14-game season.
In the auction, head coach Ashish Nehra was determined to acquire Tewatia, and did so at a hefty price of INR 9 crore (approx. $US 1.2 million). The team Nehra had to fight off was, interestingly, CSK. They too are a franchise famous for backing players and discovering hidden potential. Miller came a bit cheaper at INR 3 crore, but it wasn’t without a battle either. The Titans had INR 8.65 crore remaining in their purse and Rajasthan Royals had INR 8.60 crore. The Royals pushed them, but the Titans held fast.
What looked like a huge million and a half dollars wasted on has-been players, turned into a smart million and a half dollars spent on reborn players. This is where the warning line on stock market investments comes in handy for the auctions: past performance is no guarantee of future returns. And what’s left unsaid: past failure is no guarantee against future success.
Look at the contrast in Tewatia’s numbers from 2021, and since he’s joined GT. His problem had actually been simple enough. Teams had figured out that they could tie him down by bowling wide lines outside off and setting fields for it. He had a brutal legside game, but wasn’t as adept on the off. If teams figured it out, so did Tewatia. He worked on his game in the between the IPL seasons, and came back retooled. He not only had a few extra shot options, he had become more comfortable moving across the crease to negate that wide line. And Ashish Nehra knew that. Nehra’s cricketing instinct was spot on – that if Tewatia could work around that one weakness, he would become a force again.
“I had improved my off-stump game quite a bit from the start of the IPL and hit quite a few shots,” Tewatia said during IPL 2022. “Because bowlers had begun planning and keeping the field outside off stump, so I thought that if I can hit my shots in the gap, I can get boundaries there too. So I could open up the game on both sides.”
Similarly, with Miller, Nehra knew that this was a batter worth investing in. You can see how his average and strike rates jumped hugely from his struggle years to his time with GT.
Growing up in South Africa, Miller was naturally more at ease against pace than spin. However, he too worked on his game against spin. “It’s not a huge amount, just one or two little changes,” Miller said during IPL 2024 at a press conference, after the Titans away game against RCB. “I feel like I’m looking to actually take spin down, but also play a lot more on the backfoot… It just gives me a little more time. It’s a different technique to batters who are first on the front foot and then have quick feet to get back. I struggle to do that, so initially I look to just playing on the back foot and then whenever it’s full, kind of hit downtown. But again, it’s a mindset against the spin, that ‘Where are my boundary options?’”
What Miller also lacked from 2016 to 2021 was role clarity and security. When he joined the Titans, he was told that the No.4/5 spot was his, and he didn’t have to worry about anything else. The freedom that gave Miller translated into immediate results.
Nehra saw beyond Miller’s lean run in the IPL, because the batter had been delivering in white-ball cricket elsewhere.
In 2022, Miller said: “It’s been really, really encouraging to be a part of the Gujarat Titans and just know that I’m 100% backed.” Despite the dip in fortunes this year, Miller hasn’t experienced a change in team ethos, saying: “He (Nehra) has got a gift for really making a lot of time for every single player. Getting around and making sure that guys are in a good space, whether they are not playing or they’re playing. So a lot of work goes off the field, after the games, before the games, that Ashish Nehra does.”
It’s a sentiment echoed across the board by GT players. They have said, in public and private, that there hasn’t been a team environment quite like what Nehra has fostered. That if you are prepared to put in the work, you will always be supported.
This IPL season is done for them, but there’s a mega auction looming. If it appears to anyone that GT haven’t quite put a winning combination together after that, it’s best to remember that appearances can be deceptive. The purchases of Miller and Tewatia in 2022 have shown us that.
Stats by Varun Alvakonda (updated till May 8, 2024)
