The former Indian cricketer Ashish Nehra had a great start to his coaching career in the IPL as Gujarat Titans won the IPL 2022 in their debut season and Nehra was praised a lot for his superb coaching style. However, GT is not playing in the same manner as it played in the last season because in the last season, they were winning close matches but in the IPL 2023, they have already lost two close matches.
The last match that GT played was against Rajasthan Royals and till now, GT was invincible against RR but in the last match, RR managed to defeat GT for the first time in total 4 encounters. In this match, the head coach of GT Ashish Nehra was seen constantly talking and advising the GT players who were fielding on the boundary.
The former Indian cricketer Virender Sehwag who has played a lot with Ashish Nehra, first for Delhi at domestic level and then for India at the international level, has given his opinion on Nehra constantly talking to the GT players. While speaking in a show, Virender Sehwag states that he knows Ashish Nehra since childhood and by talking to the GT players on the boundary, he was trying to deal with his anxiety but it could have increased the pressure on the players. Viru paaji further said that Nehra had a talk with Mohammad Shami when the pacer was fielding on the boundary and then he got hit for runs in the last over.
The former Delhi cricketer Rajat Bhatia also agreed with Virender Sehwag and said that he personally felt the manner in which Ashish Nehra walked around and talked to the players on boundary, it increased the pressure on the players as last year, GT used to win close matches but this year, they have lost two close games.
The match was played on 16 April 2023 at Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad, and RR chose to bowl first after winning the toss. GT scored 177/7 in their stipulated 20 overs and the highest scorer for the Gujarat franchise was David Miller who played a knock of 46 runs (30 balls, 3 fours & 2 sixes).
RR had a bad start as they lost both their openers at the score of 4 and in the 11th over, they were reeling at the score of 55/4 and needed 124 runs to win in 57 balls. This was not as easy task but blistering knocks by skipper Sanju Samson (60 runs, 32 balls, 3 fours & 6 sixes) and Shimron Hetmyer (56 runs, 26 balls, 2 fours & 5 sixes) changed the course of the game. R Ashwin may have played just 3 balls but he scored 10 valuable runs (1 four & 1 six) which helped the team in chasing the target with 4 balls remaining.
Talking about RR’s win, Virender Sehwag states that such victories increase the morale and self-confidence and this win would make them believe that they can enter the play-offs and the finals and may win it as well.
Do you also think that Ashish Nehra increased pressure of the GT players by talking to them while they were fielding on boundary? Let us know your opinion in this connection.