Gujarat Titans 181 for 5 (Gill 86, Varun 2-34) beat Kolkata Knight Riders 180 (Green 79, Rabada 3-29, Siraj 2-23, Ashok 2-45) by five wickets
A display straight out of Gujarat Titans' (GT) time-tested playbook - high-quality fast bowling to restrict the opposition, and a chase of a below-par target led by the silken Shubman Gill - ensured Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) remained winless six games into their IPL 2026 campaign.
KKR began the contest with a questionable selection - they left out Finn Allen, their highest-ceiling top-order option - and a questionable toss decision - they opted to bat when the home captain, Gill, expected dew to set in later in the evening. And for most of the 39.4 overs of the actual match, they were distinctly second-best.
There was only one brief period of KKR dominance, when they scored 52 in three overs (12th to 14th) as Cameron Green went on a boundary-hitting spree. Green's 55-ball 79, however, was a strange and ultimately frustrating innings: he struggled for fluency early on, scoring 27 off his first 29 balls, and finished with a whimper, scoring just four off his last 11, a period in which KKR collapsed around him while starving him of strike: they went from 147 for 4 in the 15th over to 180 all out.
The conditions weren't the flattest - Mohammed Siraj and Kagiso Rabada swung the new ball right through the powerplay, and all of GT's quicks found a bit of seam movement - but this was, nonetheless, a below-par total.
This set up a chase made for GT's top order. Gill picked off the boundaries surgically in the powerplay - he scored 34 off 15 in that phase - and slowed down when the field spread. He slowed down dramatically, in fact - he only scored 52 off 35 outside the powerplay - but he could afford to because GT had knocked 71 runs off their target in the first six overs, with Sai Sudharsan and Jos Buttler contributing quick cameos.
The rest of the chase showed the question marks that still hang over this GT line-up - they continued to huff and puff even when the required rate was in the region of a run a ball, and eventually got home with just two balls remaining - and KKR would have ended the match wishing they had scored 20 runs more.
Ambati Rayudu on the lack of impact from the KKR batter
Siraj and Rabada dominate KKR's powerplay
Every ball of Siraj's first over was an outswinger, and while Tim Seifert - playing his first IPL game since 2022 - put away one that offered a little too much width, the others all asked questions, and one of them took out Ajinkya Rahane, the KKR captain, skewing one high in the air with the swing causing his bat to twist in his hands.
The second over was similar, with Seifert pulling Rabada for a six before the bowler struck back to remove the other batter. This time, the ball swung from a hard length, with extra bounce, and Angkrish Raghuvanshi nicked off in a Test-match manner.
GT stuck with their new-ball pair through the entire powerplay, and both bowlers kept asking questions with their accuracy and movement. There was one more wicket - Seifert slapping an innocuous ball from Rabada straight to point - and not many more runs. KKR's 37 for 1 was the fifth-lowest six-over score of IPL 2026, and their second entry in the bottom five.
Green's innings of three parts
Green struggled to middle the ball early on, and went at less than a run a ball - and at a control percentage in the mid-50s - for nearly 30 balls. Then he flicked on a switch, putting his long levers to devastating use, particularly against Rashid Khan, whom he put under pressure with decisive use of the feet. Ashok Sharma, who had dismissed Rovman Powell by changing up from mid-140s hard length to a back-of-the-hand slower one at 106kph, also travelled, and KKR found momentum out of nowhere.
At 147 for 4 in the 15th over, KKR were well on course for 200.
Ambati Rayudu on Cameron Green's knock
Then came the strangest of collapses. Green was stuck at one end, facing just two balls while KKR lost 5 for 26 at the other. When Green finally got on strike in the 19th over - via Kartik Tyagi getting run-out in the attempt to steal a bye - Prasidh Krishna tied him down expertly, nailing his yorkers even when Green presented a moving target.
And Green, having lost his rhythm, struggled spectacularly in the 20th over, against Rashid, whom he had till then dominated. He scored just one run off the bat off the five balls he faced in the over - a questionable single with No. 11 at the other end - and his most positive scorecard contribution came when he charged, missed, and collected four byes with the unsighted Buttler missing the stumping. Green nicked off to a wide legbreak off the last ball of KKR's innings, bringing an odd and ultimately unconvincing knock to a close.
Gill sets it up perfectly
Gill stroked three buttery fours in the first two overs, and launched Anukul Roy's left-arm spin for an effortless inside-out six in the third. Then he took a single and let Sai Sudharsan take on his favourable match-up, which he did with two leg-side sixes to close out a 20-run over.
GT were 40 for no loss in three overs, and Gill kept the momentum going with a sumptuous straight six off Vaibhav Arora in the fifth over. GT didn't cede any control even when Sunil Narine took out Sai Sudharsan in the sixth over, with Buttler hitting him for two fours - one fortuitous, off the inside edge - and a six off the first five balls he faced. At 71 for 1 with 14 overs to go, there was only going to be one winner.
Ambati Rayudu suggests they play Jason Holder in the XI
GT middle order finishes off, not in style
Gill's middle-overs slowdown made perfect sense from a situation point of view. KKR needed quick wickets to win this, and they weren't going to get them from one end as long as Gill was in the middle. But boundaries dried up at the other end too, particularly when Varun Chakravarthy dismissed Buttler in the tenth over.
Washington Sundar scored a run-a-ball 13, and Glenn Phillips struggled to time the ball, and when Gill sliced Arora to a diving Green at deep point in the 17th over, the contest began to look ever so slightly interesting.
The boundaries came in a drip, and Phillips and Rahul Tewatia entered the final over with five runs needed. All of KKR's main bowlers had bowled out, and Roy's left-arm fingerspin wasn't going to be risked with the left-handed Tewatia at the crease. Green, struggling with cramps, hadn't bowled all evening.
So the task of bowling the last over fell to the military-medium Ramandeep Singh, and he managed to get a bouncer to climb high enough to have Phillips caught on the boundary off his first legal ball, leaving GT with four to get off five balls. GT ultimately got there, but who knows what a more challenging target could have done to them.
