Kamal Ghorui
Gujarat Titans were bowled out for 100, but captain Shubman Gill blamed bowlers after the 99-run defeat to Mumbai Indians in the Indian Premier League 2026 match on Monday.Gill said his side gave away too many runs in the middle overs and failed to control the flow despite understanding the pitch conditions.“Honestly, I think we gave away too many runs in the middle overs. On a wicket like that, I think 160-170 was a par score. But I think there are a lot of learnings for us from this game,” Gill said.He added that the loss should be treated as a learning phase as Gujarat prepare for their next set of away matches.“I mean, a small hiccup, but now we’ve got a couple of games on the road, so hopefully we will come back on the winning side again,” he added.The defeat was Gujarat Titans’ biggest margin of loss in the IPL, going past their 83-run loss to Chennai Super Kings in 2025 and 63-run defeat to the same team in 2024, according to CricViz data.Gill pointed to execution issues, especially in the middle overs, where Gujarat failed to apply pressure.“I think the wicket was a little bit on the slower side. I don’t think we hit the right areas. The length ball wasn’t coming on as well, some balls were coming, some weren’t, and some were keeping low. I think we could have hit that length in the middle overs a bit more consistently, which we were not able to,” he said.On whether conditions changed in the second innings, Gill said the pitch remained similar, with some improvement due to dew.“I think it was pretty similar. If at all, it could have gotten a little bit better because I think there was a bit more dew when we were batting,” he added.Mumbai Indians posted 199/5 after batting first, with Tilak Varma scoring an unbeaten 101 off 45 balls. They recovered after early wickets and scored strongly in the final overs.Gujarat lost Sai Sudharsan for a golden duck and were 45/3 inside six overs before collapsing further.Ashwani Kumar took 4/24, Mitchell Santner took 2/16, and AM Ghazanfar took 2/17 as Gujarat were bowled out for 100.With this result, Mumbai Indians moved to seventh place with two wins and four losses from six matches, and a net run rate of +0.067.
