Having played in the 6th match of the IPL last time around, the two newbies faced each other for the second time this season. Gujarat Lions beat Rising Pune Supergiants comfortably by 7 wickets in the first encounter. With the start of the second leg, many of the teams are looking to change their fortunes and so were RPS. Raina called it right at the toss and chose to bowl first.

RPS opened with Ajinkya Rahane and Saurabh Tiwary as Faf du Plessis suffered a fractured finger, ruling him out of this edition’s IPL. As Tiwary lost his wicket trying to go for a quick single, Rahane was joined by the Australian skipper Steven Smith. Rahane made sure he played the waiting game while Smith went for his shots. The Australian was in great touch as he dealt in boundaries from the start of his innings. He placed the ball to perfection in order to get his fours and sixes, of which there were plenty. The two put on a partnership of a 111 runs but this is when Ajinkya got out. Rahane was involved in a mix-up resulting in the second run out of the night. Smith 101(54) was joined by skipper Dhoni 30(18) who played a great cameo towards the end, helping the Lion’s score to 195/3. Smith’s knock of 101 included 5 sixes and 8 fours.

Being the highest score at the venue, the target seemed daunting. But, with GL’s batting line-up and recent form, they came out looking confident. Their opening batsmen instilled this belief even further when they gave their innings another explosive start. Dwayne Smith and McCullum made the most of the power play and scored 72 runs in the first six overs. The rate at which they were going, it felt that the match would be done and dusted by the 15th over. Bhatia got the much-needed breakthrough when McCullum top-edged a delivery to short fine leg breaking the opening partnership of 93 runs. Dwayne Smith followed suite soon and was dismissed off a quick yorker from Thisara Perera. Suresh Raina and Dinesh Karthik tried to build on the platform given to them by the openers and put on a 50 run partnership. It was then when Karthik got out, trying to go for a big one. Even after losing a cluster of wickets in the last two overs, GL managed to win the fixture, albeit, off the last ball of the innings. The Pune outfit face the defending champions in their next fixture. It will be interesting to see how they come back from the anguish of this close defeat.