Ahmedabad, April 10, 2025
A lot had been said about Rashid Khan’s dwindling returns in IPL of late, but the premier Afghanistan leg-spinner bounced back in Gujarat Titans’ 58-run win over Rajasthan Royals by picking crucial scalps of Dhruv Jurel and Shubham Dubey to end with 2-37 in his four overs.
Rashid said his endeavour during the match at the Narendra Modi Stadium was to bowl in a good area after admitting to missing his usual line and length. “If you work hard, you always get positive results. It was a difficult wicket to bowl for either a pacer or spinner. But we enjoyed it a lot as a bowling unit and as a player.”
“There is a lot of expectation from everyone. You have to do well in every match. If you are not good in one or two matches, there is a lot of expectations from people that this shouldn’t be happening. I have played 126 matches in the IPL. So, sometimes you want to do something, but it doesn’t happen and you don’t get a good result.
“I forgot my previous matches and the mistakes I made. I sat with sandy bhai and video analyst, as well as analysing with the coaches. I was just missing my usual line and length. It’s not like I was physically fit; I was mentally fit.
But in the last two matches, I was trying to bowl in a good area. The more I bowled, the better it was for me and the team,” said Rashid to left-arm pacer Kulwant Khejroliya in a video on iplt20.com.
Rashid also hit a cameo of 12 with the bat, as GT posted 217/6. He attributed his batting success to practising for it consistently, with some backing coming from head coach Ashish Nehra.
“To be honest, my batting has started to come good when I came to GT. The reason is that I get more opportunities to work on my batting skills. Also, thanks to Ashish Bhai. He gave me the trust that I can bat for the team. I practice my shots and I back it up in the match. I practice and work hard on my batting. If I get a ball in my area, I will try to finish matches.”
Khejroliya got to be GT’s impact player and took 1/29. He revealed Nehra had been telling him to be ready as his chance could come anytime. “First of all, let me tell you that I wasn’t in the 15 man squad for this game. But for the last couple of days, Ashu bhai was telling me to be ready for playing at any time.
“Because sometimes, in a warm-up, if a player gets injured, you have to be ready. So, before the match, I was ready to play. But as soon as the toss happened, bhaiya told me that I was in the 15 and I had to play.
“So, that was the preparation that I was doing for the last 10-15 days, I got a chance, so I felt good to have a chance at playing after two seasons. I had been telling (Mohammed) Siraj, Nishant (Sindhu) and everyone else that I will play the match. You can ask them,” he said.(Agency)
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