5 min readUpdated: May 1, 2026 12:40 AM IST
Gujarat Titans did not win this game with one moment. They won it with accumulation — Shubman Gill’s 43 in 18 balls, Jos Buttler’s four sixes in the Powerplay, Rahul Tewatia’s calm at the death, and through it all, Jason Holder standing on the field, arms aloft, slowly turning to the crowd.
Royal Challengers Bengaluru, dismissed for 155 — their first all-out of the season — never recovered from the middle-over carnage that Holder and Rashid Khan visited upon them. GT knocked off the target in 15.5 overs, winning by four wickets.
Rabada’s revenge
Kagiso Rabada had conceded five fours in his first over. The ball had gone past cover point, through mid-off, over mid-on, to deep backward point, and between cover point and extra cover. Virat Kohli’s bat had found every gap. Then, in the second over, Rabada came short and quick around middle and leg. Kohli advanced. The pace hurried him, the bounce handcuffed him. The shape left his body before the bat came down, and the top edge found Rashid at mid-wicket, running back and tumbling to take the catch. Kohli walked off for 28 off 13. Rabada watched him go, with fiery eyes.
One over of Kohli at his most fluent, and one ball from Rabada that asked a question the footwork couldn’t answer.
The Barbadian
Barbadian Jason Holder arrived at this game as a bowler. He left it as something else entirely. The Rajat Patidar catch was the one that needed explaining. The batsman had pulled Arshad Khan to the right of deep square-leg — Holder rushed across, Rabada converging too before pulling out at the last instant. Holder lunged to pouch it, but did the ball touch the ground as he went down? Did he use the ball itself to push himself back up, pressing it into the turf? Holder’s fingers were under it, or they weren’t. RCB believed one thing. The third umpire something else. These are the millimetres that matches turn on, and this one turned GT’s way.
It didn’t stop there. The very next over, Holder the bowler drew Jitesh into a drive outside off, the thick outside edge flying into Buttler’s gloves. One contested catch, one clean wicket, two RCB batsmen gone in eight deliveries. Then Tim David whipped Rashid hard and flat to mid-wicket — Holder pouched it, sharp hands to his right, barely a step to spare. Krunal Pandya flicked to the same spot two overs later, and Holder simply waited. In the 14th, a scrambled-seam delivery, Shepherd pulled straight to deep midwicket. Holder stood there, arms aloft, slowly turning to the crowd. Five contributions. One man.
He had not so much fielded as dismantled.
Rashid’s stranglehold
Rashid’s figures read 2 for 19 from four overs. The numbers don’t quite capture the weight of his performance. With Devdutt Padikkal threatening to drag RCB toward something respectful in the 14th over, Rashid pushed one through quicker on middle, a good skidder. Padikkal rocked back, got into a tangle, and edged onto his pads, and the ball ricocheted onto the stumps.
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Rashid Khan in action. (Vipin Pawar / CREIMAS for IPL)
Romario Shepherd had hit Rashid for two sixes in the same over. Rashid answered with a wicket off the next ball. That is what he does — absorbs the blow, then lands his own.
It was Rashid who finished the match in the chase. He flat-batted a length delivery over extra-cover on the bounce, and the game was done. Kohli walked across and wrapped his arms around him.
Gill and Buttler’s Powerplay blitz
Gill announced himself in the first over, lofting Bhuvneshwar Kumar over extra-cover and holding the pose. Then Josh Hazlewood arrived and Gill took 24 off the over — cuts, lofts, a punch square that split two fielders, Hazlewood watching on with a resigned wry smile.
Gill’s ended with a good catch: Bhuvneshwar full, Gill making room, drilling it straight to Kohli at cover, who reverse-cupped near his neck and flung the ball into the turf mouthing a “come on”. Forty-three off 18, four fours, three sixes. Gill walked off, head back, knowing.
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Buttler picked up where Gill had left off. Three sixes off Suyash Sharma in three balls, fielders as spectators. Bhuvneshwar finished him the same way he finished Gill — full, on leg-stump, pad in the way, leg-stump gone. Thirty-nine off 19. GT were 92 for 3. Tewatia, unhurried, saw them home.
When GT wobbled in the chase, Holder walked out to bat at 111 for 5. He hit Shepherd over long-on for six, rotated the strike quietly to keep Tewatia going, and departed for 12 with the target nearly done. Some evenings belong entirely to one person. This was one of them.
Brief scores: RCB 155 all out in 19.2 overs (Padikkal 40, Kohli 28; Arshad Khan 3/22, Rashid Khan 2/19) lost to GT 158/6 in 15.5 overs (Gill 43, Buttler 39; Bhuvneshwar Kumar 3/28) by four wickets.
