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Gujarat Titans vs Mumbai Indians saw some intense moments on the field on Saturday, March 29. GT’s R Sai Kishore and MI captain Hardik Pandya engaged in a heated war of words during the match.
Gujarat Titans star bowler R Sai Kishore broke silence on his staredown with Mumbai Indians’ captain Hardik Pandya.
A controversial staredown between Mumbai Indians captain Hardik Pandya and Gujarat Titans star bowler R Sai Kishore hogged limelight during the 9th match of Indian Premier League 2025 in Ahmedabad on Saturday. The furious clash even saw Hardik yelling “F*** off” to the spinner. While the words of Hardik were not caught on the stump mic, the movement of his lips made is clear what was said. It happened during the 15th over of Mumbai Indians’ chase when Sai Kishore bowled three dot balls to Hardik of the four balls bowled by then.
While the controversial moment between the duo went viral on internet, both Hardik and Kishore were seen hugging each other after the match. The heartwarming moment too dragged the attention of the netizens on X (formerly Twitter).
While reacting to the incident after the game, Kishore said, “He (Hardik) is a good friend of mine, inside the field it should be like that, but we don’t take things personally.”
Kishore returned figures of 1 for 37 in his quota of four overs. Talking about his bowling, he said, “I wasn’t getting as much purchase today, so had to bowl defensively and had to do a job for the team. The pitch played better than it looked.
MI lost the game by 36 runs to GT. Suryakumar Yadav was their top-scorer with a 48-run knock off 28.
“He (Suryakumar Yadav) played well, he swept all my good length balls. If someone plays a good shot, you have to credit the batter. I have to credit Shubman (Gill), he kept advising me on what to bowl to Surya since he’s seen him in the Indian nets. Looking forward to this season, I’ve been very honest with myself and worked very hard. Have watched a lot of games and worked on a lot of things for this season, so looking forward to this season,” said Kishore.
Hardik fails with bat as MI winless in first two matches
On the other hand, Hardik, who had a brilliant night with the bowl, failed to replicate the same with the bat against his former franchise. The star allrounder picked two wickets for 29 and later scored 11 runs off 17 balls as his team suffered its second loss in a row this season. Rabada dismissed him in the 17th over which almost sealed the fate of the game.
Prasidh Krishna (2/18) and Mohammed Siraj (2/34) were the pick of the bowlers for Gujarat as they managed to restrict Mumbai to 160/6 in 20 overs after posting 196/8 batting first. Siraj struck twice inside the batting powerplay when he bowled openers Rohit Sharma and Ryan Rickelton but it was Krishna who put the stamp of authority when he bagged the big wickets of Suryakumar Yadav (48) and Tilak Varma (39) in the middle overs.
GT beat Mumbai to win the tie by 36 runs on Saturday. After scoring 196 runs in the first innings, GT kept MI quiet and restricted them to just 160 runs despite the conditions being conducive to batting in the second innings.
