IPL 2022, Gujarat Titans, squad, fixtures and more: Hardik-led side has strong core but lacks depth

For a team that got so much right with their first three signings – Hardik Pandya, Rashid Khan, Shubman Gill – the end of the auction did not make for a great reading. It is not that they have a bad squad on paper, but it is certainly not the best one that could have been built with the platform they had laid down and the talent that was available.

While the mega auction itself surprised many in how it panned out, and you could not say definitively which team did the best recruitment, not many would argue with the fact that Titans will not feature close to the top.

Squad

Rahmanullah Gurbaz joined Titans as a replacement for England opener Jason Roy, who had pulled out recently, citing mental fatigue.

Gurbaz, an Afghanistan wicketkeeper-batter, has played 20 T20Is, and has 534 runs against his name with the help of 3 half-centuries and a strike rate close to 138 in the T20 internationals.

Gurbaz, who joins Gujarat Titans at his base price of Rs 50 Lakh, will be the third Afghanistan cricketer alongside Rashid Khan and Noor Ahmad to feature for the franchise. Apart from that, Alzarri Joseph will miss the start of the tournament.

Full squad: Shubman Gill, Wriddhiman Saha, David Miller, Vijay Shankar, Hardik Pandya, Rashid Khan, Rahul Tewatia, R Sai Kishore, Lockie Ferguson, Mohammed Shami, Noor Ahmad, Abhinav Manohar, Matthew Wade, Jayant Yadav, Darshan Nalkande, Yash Dayal, B. Sai Sudharsan, Gurkeerat Singh, Alzarri Joseph, Varun Aaron, Pradeep Sangwan, Dominic Drakes

IPL Auction, Gujarat Titans review: Possible best XI, strengths and weaknesses

Most Valuable Player

It’s hard to look past Hardik Pandya, the captain. Whether he is the allrounder everyone wants him to be and he himself keeps everyone guessing, is not clear. It feels, sometimes, like a distraction from how good a batter he can be. The will-he-won’t-he aspect of his bowling notwithstanding, a fit and firing Hardik Pandya in the middle order is a matchwinner like few others in Indian cricket and the Titans will be hoping that is the version we will see. For Indian cricket team fans too, Hardik Pandya’s success as a batter will be exciting given the World Cup is in Australia and how good he was the last time India played a bilateral white-ball series Down Under.

Uncapped Indian to watch out for

R Sai Kishore has been so good for Tamil Nadu for so long now, it’s a shame we have not seen enough of him in the Indian Premier League. Regular followers of domestic cricket rave about his left-arm spin, especially the control and guile he offers, and if given consistent chances, he could be a bowler who offers plenty of support to the brilliance of Rashid Khan at the other end. Imagine them bowling in tandem, and the opponent batters surely can’t decide to play them both out. Targeting one at the expense of other, could be a sources of wickets for this GT side and it has the making of a brilliant middle-overs partnership especially later on in the tournament.

Quotes corner

Head coach Ashish Nehra to ESPNCricinfo: “IPL is that kind of a tournament [in which] from year one you would like to do well, and you can do well because everybody has the same purse. We have enough allrounders, we have a good bowling unit, we have a young, exciting captain. There will be things over a period of time we will learn, but right now if somebody asked me, ‘Are you happy with your squad?’, I’m very pleased the way things have gone.”

Watch Hardik Pandya’s interview on iplt20.com here

Fixtures

Gujarat will open their campaign with a match against Lucknow, and they will finish their league stage with a match against Bangalore.

Teams to play twice: LSG, CSK, SRH, RCB, PBKS
Teams to play once: MI, KKR, RR, DC