The middle-order silver lining in Gujarat Titans' heavy defeat

They suffered their joint-second-worst defeat by runs in their history as an IPL team, but Thursday night was still an encouraging one for Gujarat Titans (GT).

There's no such thing as a good defeat, of course, and this 33-run loss to Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) put a dent in GT's hopes of a top-two finish in the IPL 2025 league phase. On the way to that result, however, they ticked off at least one significant box ahead of the playoffs.

Coming into Thursday's match, GT had been the most top-heavy line-up of the tournament, with their top three scoring nearly 77% of all their runs. Their openers were the top two run-getters in the tournament, and their No. 3 wasn't far behind, sitting at No. 7 on the run charts.

All that top-order success had limited GT's middle-order batters to bit-part roles. Their No. 4 had batted only twice inside the first ten overs in 12 matches, and their No. 5 not even once.

Coming into this game against LSG, GT had the worst average of any middle order (Nos. 4 to 7) this season. On the flip side, they had the best strike rate for those positions. You could say they were doing rather well given the constraints they were operating under, but those constraints had left too small a sample size to draw meaningful conclusions from.

With the playoffs looming, GT's middle order was in serious need of time at the crease. As well as Shubman Gill, B Sai Sudharsan and Jos Buttler were doing, GT may almost have been hoping for all three of them to get dismissed early in one of their last two league games - particularly with Buttler to play no part in the playoffs.

As it happened, that unspoken but probably not uncontemplated hope took material form on Thursday. Chasing 236, GT were three down in 9.3 overs, which meant that their No. 5 made his earliest entry of the season by far, beating the previous record by 22 balls.

Gill, Sai Sudharsan and Buttler had done their bit before that, scoring quickly enough but getting out of the way early enough to leave their successors an equation that was steep but not outside the realms of possibility. When M Shahrukh Khan joined Sherfane Rutherford at the crease, GT needed 140 in 63 balls.

Shahrukh has enjoyed a curious career in the IPL. The promise of his domestic T20 record, and the flashes of six-hitting power he has shown over time, have earned him INR 34.65 crore over five seasons of auctions and retentions. That's a lot of money for an uncapped player, but coming into Thursday, he had only crossed 30 five times in 46 innings.

That's partly down to the thankless role he plays; seldom does he get any time at the crease before he has to swing at everything.

Shahrukh had that time on Thursday, even if a required rate nearing 14 meant there wasn't much of it. But even this limited window allowed him to give the world a glimpse of the player he had been in his teenage years, when he hadn't yet grown into this 6'4" powerhouse, and when his technique rather than his power was the talk of Chennai's cricketing circles - he's referred to as "almost Laxmanesque" in this feature from 2014. You could kind of see it now. A back-foot defensive shot against Akash Singh. A flicked single off Will O'Rourke. A front-foot drive through the covers, with one knee on the ground, off Avesh Khan.

GT needed more than that, of course, and Shahrukh obliged. When Akash Deep missed his length on a wide yorker, Shahrukh sliced him with astonishing power over the backward-point boundary. When the same bowler went for a yorker at the stumps and missed his length only marginally, Shahrukh created elevation with minimal room with a bottom-handed shovel that whistled back over the bowler's head. In between, he stepped out to Shahbaz Ahmed and mowed him between long-on and deep midwicket, clearing the boundary despite connecting only with the inside half of his bat. This is the raw six-hitting power that makes him so sought-after.

Rutherford brought the big hits too - an effortless flick off Avesh, a reverse-sweep off Shahbaz - and suddenly, GT were in with a chance. At the 16-over mark, when they needed 54 off 24, ESPNcricinfo gave them a 42% win probability. When Buttler had been dismissed in the 10th over, it had fallen to below 4%.

"After the first three wickets, our middle order batted really well and brought the game on course," Sai Sudharsan said at his post-match press conference. "From there, having four overs, 54 runs on the board, I think any other day we would have got those runs for the team."

It didn't happen on this day, but GT still became the first team to breach 200 seven times in an IPL season. And this time, the middle order played a key role in taking them there.

"I feel [the] middle order has done pretty well [through the season]," Sai Sudharsan said. "Even in the first six, seven, eight games, Sherfane stepped up and got so many runs in the middle order and changed games for us. Even in Mumbai he changed the course of the game for us.

"Even Shahrukh bhai got an opportunity today to showcase his talent. So I feel the middle order is on course as well. I don't think there is some gap or something in the middle order. I feel, touch wood, things went well for all the three batters at the top so they didn't get more opportunity to play in the first half of the tournament."

Thursday brought defeat for GT, and a worrying one if it puts them out of the top two. But it also brought them significant positives going into the business end of IPL 2025.