Rabada was getting the ball to kiss the wicket and fly through. His first over for just seven runs helped GT recover from Mohammed Siraj having the start of an off day (4-0-48-1). But then Vaibhav Sooryavanshi hit a good length ball over point for four. Jaiswal topped that by pulling a short ball which gave him no room for six. Throughout the innings batters could trust the pace and the bounce on offer and RR took that as reason to keep hitting shots.

There used to be unwritten rules in cricket. Shortish balls are played off the back foot. Get your eye in before playing the big shot. All of them were tossed into the bin on Saturday night.

Jaiswal stepped confidently forward to a back of a length ball from Prasidh Krishna in the sixth over and launched it for six down the ground. He went to fifty with another front foot essay, this time through the covers, as he generated the power he needed to a Siraj hard length ball that didn’t offer a lot of room, with his bottom hand.

Jurel was out there for less than 10 balls before he hit an extra cover drive to a 146 kph delivery that was still on the way up for four. Actually, it will be better described as falling inches short of a six.

Even the great Rashid’s good balls ended up on the rope. Jurel hit a Rashid wicket-to-wicket skidder – the kind that gets right-handers lbw when they hit across the line – to the boundary between midwicket and long-on by making sure he was playing with a straight bat. There’s no way to figure out how he had the time to play that shot given how quickly the ball was onto him, and how it was cramping him up badly. Later, when he was past fifty, Jurel charged at Rashid – which is very rare because, again, he bowls so quickly – and tonked him for six over long-on.

He came into the IPL with a reputation having picked up more wickets than anybody else in India’s most recent domestic T20 competition. Very quickly it was apparent that his success was not just about his pace, which he cranked up to 154.2 kph recording the fastest ball of the IPL so far. Ashok Sharma is one to watch.

His day began with Sooryavanshi edging him to the keeper but Jos Buttler put down a very difficult catch. The next ball went for six. A player in his 12th T20 game should have been under pressure. Everything was going against him at that point. Whether Ashok felt it or not, he ran in again, forced Jaiswal down on his back side with a bouncer and kept him quiet with a yorker and completed the over with a sequence of 1, 0, 2, 0.

On Friday, Chennai Super Kings coach Stephen Fleming said that there is no such thing as a finisher in T20 cricket anymore because every batter comes out looking to hit sixes. So that might mean all 20 overs have turned into death overs and bowlers will want to dig into those skills a little earlier, yorkers, slower balls. Ashok did. He recovered from a boundary early in his over yet again and finished it with 0, 0, 1, 0 because he wasn’t shy of looking for the blockhole and good enough to find it more often than not. In a match of bowling talents like Rashid, Jadeja and Archer, and one that produced 414 runs at an economy rate of 10.35, Ashok refused to let his go above 9.25.

Jaiswal got to his fifty in 32 balls. He has a reputation for being a dasher even in the red-ball formats. Sai Sudarshan got to his fifty in 33 balls. He tends to be seen as more of a technician. Someone who plays himself in before expanding his strokeplay. Yet there he was keeping pace with someone higher up on the food chain. He ramped Jofra Archer for six in the first over. He enjoyed Jadeja’s extra pace to the extent that Jadeja tried taking pace off but Sai was ready for that and launched him over midwicket for six. It was calculated hitting all the way up to the 13th over when everything fell apart.

Titans were 64% favourites to win the game according to ESPNcricinfo’s forecaster. They had 127 for 2 on the board, Sai Sudharsan still at the crease and Jos Buttler starting to look ominous. Ravi Bishnoi took the ball at this point and picked up two wickets in three balls. Both left-handed batters, who tend to have it better against legspinners except Bishnoi is a special one. He always angles the ball across the left-handers. He also goes for his googly a lot. He inverts this match up in his favour. Sai Sudharsan fell to a googly that held in the pitch a bit more than he thought it would. Washington Sundary fell to a legbreak that he slog swept to midwicket. After those six balls, it was RR with the 65% chance of victory.

GT have a history of never giving up on chases and that began to play out. Rashid with those fancy hands of his and Rabada with his reach and copybook technique had brought the equation down to a very manageable level – from 50 off 30 with three wickets in hand to 15 off 12 with three wickets in hand. All of a sudden GT were favourites again. Overwhelmingly at 81.29%

Then came Archer with two separate plans and ice-cold execution. He had Rabada hopping with short balls at the body that took his power away. He kept Rashid quiet by going into the blockhole, which doesn’t always work, but this time it did. The last ball of the over ended up a full toss which Rabada missed completely. That could’ve changed the game.

Deshpande had 10 runs to defend in the last over. He started off going wide yorker which was called wide. Immediately he changed track and went straight yorker, which is risky because if he missed his length and it landed in the slot, one hit would’ve ended the game. Rashid was looking for that one hit. He couldn’t find it for four straight deliveries. Four straight perfect pinpoint yorkers. The equation was now 7 off 2. RR were favourites. Now Deshpande bowled the slot ball. Rashid sliced it over point. Archer was there. He took the catch. That was the game. Those two produced the sixth instance – in the last 52 chases where the 19th and 20th overs were needed – of zero boundaries in the last 12 balls.

Brief scores:
Rajasthan Royals 210 for 6 in 20 overs (Yashaswi Jaiswal 55, Yaibhav Sooriyavanshi 31, Dhruv Jurel 75, Shimron Hetmyer 18; Mohammed Siraj 1-48, Kagiso  Rabada 2-42, Ashok Sharma 1-37, Prasidh Krishna 1-43, Rashid Khan 1-39) beat Gujarat Titans 204 for 8 in 20 overs (Sai Sudharsan 73, Kumar Kushagra 18, Jos Buttler 26, Rahul Tewatia 12, M Shahrukh Khan 11, Rashid Khan 24, Kagiso Rabada 23*; Nandre Burger 1-29, Tushar Deshpande 1-24, Riyan Parag 1-11, Ravi Bishnoi 4-41) by six runs

[Cricinfo]