How GT's bowlers have been igniting the Sai Sudharsan-Gill fireworks

On Saturday night, Bengaluru's cricket fans paid tribute to Virat Kohli's Test career when they poured into the Chinnaswamy Stadium for a T20 game that never happened. On Sunday night, another man from Bengaluru paid his own tribute to Kohli - in Kohli's hometown no less - though this was a T20 tribute in a T20 game.

It came in the 19th over of Delhi Capitals' (DC) innings against Gujarat Titans (GT), and it came off a ball that pitched 8.7m from the stumps. That's solidly back of a length, a length that's incredibly hard to hit down the ground for six, especially off a rapid, hit-the-deck bowler, with a bat not quite vertical but certainly more vertical than horizontal.

Kohli famously hit a 19th-over six like that, off Haris Rauf at the MCG. Sunday's effort at the Arun Jaitley Stadium, from KL Rahul off Prasidh Krishna, was similar in conception and mechanics, even if it went over long-off rather than back over the bowler's head.

Rahul hit GT's fast bowlers for three sixes over long-off during his unbeaten 112 on Sunday, and none of them was straightforward. The one off Prasidh took the prize for difficulty level, but the two off Kagiso Rabada didn't come off slot balls either. In the sixth over, he used his reach to extend his arms through a lofted front-foot drive off a 6.75m ball - 6-8m is the fast bowler's good-length band. In the 11th over, Rabada followed his movement away from leg stump with a 6.99m ball, seemingly cramping him for room, only for Rahul to manufacture a straight-bat jab down the ground.

There were only four sixes in Rahul's innings - that's the joint-fewest he's hit in his seven T20 hundreds. That he hit only four sixes, and that three of them came off genuinely hard-to-hit balls, told a tale - an important tale in the context of this match and of IPL 2025 on the whole, but one that won't immediately leap out of the scorecard.

That scorecard is dominated by three big innings from opening batters - Rahul's 65-ball 112, B Sai Sudharsan's 61-ball 108, and Shubman Gill's 53-ball 93, all three unbeaten, all three scored at strike rates between 172 and 178.

GT won by 10 wickets, with an over to spare, and they romped home in a manner so clinical that the target they were chasing, 200, seemed inadequate. It probably was, but the story of this match wasn't the usual story of matches like this, of the team batting first showing too little ambition and ending up with a below-par total, of the first-innings centurion ending up with question marks over his intent or lack thereof.

Those questions have been asked of Rahul numerous times in his career, but Sunday's innings wasn't that sort of innings. If DC only made 199 despite losing just three wickets, they did so not because they didn't take enough risks with the bat but because GT tied them down with the quality of their bowling.

And that quality, though apparent if you watched closely, only really began to stand out when it had something to stand out against. And that something was the opposition's bowling.

Sai Sudharsan and Gill batted brilliantly, in a manner we've come to watch with open jaws, putting on an unbroken 205, their highest partnership in a season that has so far brought them 839 runs as a pair, at an average of 76.27, with seven 50-plus stands of which three have gone past the century mark. It's almost unheard of for an opening pair to score so consistently, with such control, while seeming to take so few risks, without leaving you wondering if they left 10 or 15 runs out in the middle.

It's a neat trick, and it's partly explained by the quality of batsmanship: you only need to watch Sai Sudharsan's no-look flicked six off T Natarajan, or Gill's flicked six off the same bowler, hit nonchalantly against the angle, to know that these are hugely gifted strokemakers.

But that's not the whole story. The other thing that makes this trick possible is GT's bowling attack, which gives Sai Sudharsan and Gill the luxury of taking chances less frequently than opening pairs who play for teams with inferior attacks.

Watch the highlights of Rahul's innings and count the boundaries off hit-me balls. Do the same with the highlights of GT's chase. Compare.

Sai Sudharsan hit four fours and a six off the first nine balls he faced, and four of them came off hit-me balls: two hip-high balls angling down the leg side, two short balls offering room to free the arms.

There were periods when DC managed to string together sequences of quiet overs - they only conceded 27 from the fifth to the eighth overs, for instance - and neither Sai Sudharsan nor Gill tried to break free by manufacturing a boundary. But DC simply couldn't sustain that pressure for long enough, and this is how most IPL attacks operate.

And GT, at all times, were only chasing 200, because their attack hadn't operated like most IPL attacks. They operated, instead, like an attack that had Ashish Nehra's eyes on them at all times.

As GT's head coach, Nehra's bowling philosophy is simple: bowl good lengths, bowl to your field, and keep at it; if the batter still manages to find the boundary, say "well done, let's see you try that again." A lot of coaches talk the same game, but few keep their bowlers on as tight a leash as Nehra does, screaming instructions from the edge of the playing area.

And it helps when those instructions are carried out by fast bowlers as good as Mohammed Siraj and Prasidh - both of whom have benefited immensely from the simplicity of Nehra's stick-to-your-strengths philosophy - and spinners as good as Rashid Khan and R Sai Kishore. All four have featured in all of GT's matches this season.

The moment that best illustrated GT's bowling quality on Sunday came from their one questionable tactical call, giving Sai Kishore the 16th over when Axar Patel was at the crease. That over, pitting a left-arm fingerspinner against a left-hand batter known for his prowess against spin, brought DC 15 runs, but Sai Kishore really made Axar earn his runs. Both the four and the six he hit in that over came off quick, good-length balls angled away from his hitting arc; both times, Sai Kishore forced Axar to use all of his immense reach to find a way to hit down the ground.

The contrast between that over and the big overs that littered GT's innings was stark, the latter invariably chock-full of slot balls or balls offering width.

And this wasn't just the story of this match. It's been the story of IPL 2025. GT have assembled a squad of neatly interlocking parts, with a bowling attack that allows their top order to play to their strengths and maximise them. DC have never quite found that sort of structure or coherence - they didn't have it even during their run of four straight wins at the start of the season.

It's why the two teams are where they are right now. GT are the first team into the playoffs, and DC need other results to go their way to have a chance of joining them. And while the top order will take a lot of credit for how GT's season has gone, they'll know that their bowlers have made things a lot easier for them.