Brief scores: Gujarat Titans (229 for four in 20 overs) beat Chennai Super Kings (140 all-out in 13.4 overs) by 89 runs in Ahmedabad.
Chennai Super Kings’ IPL 2026 campaign ended up in smoke as Gujarat Titans condemned them to an 89-run loss in Ahmedabad on Thursday, May 21. With the loss, CSK finished the season with just 12 points from 14 matches and officially got eliminated from the tournament. This was the third consecutive year that Chennai finished out of the top four and without playing in the play-offs.
For Gujarat, the win means that they strengthened their chances of playing qualifier 1 after they dominated Chennai in all three departments. The win was setup by Sai Sudharsan’s 84, Shubman Gill’s 64 and Jos Buttler’s explosive 57, which helped them post 229 runs in the first innings.
In response, Chennai were bundled out for 140 runs in 13.4 overs, with Shivam Dube being the only batter who got going on the track.
DID CSK MAKE UNNECESSARY EXPERIMENTS?
When the team sheets were out on Thursday, it felt like CSK decided to make a lot of changes with their season on the line. In times like these, you usually sit down and go with your tried and tested formula. But they decided to bench Prashant Veer and Akeal Hosein and brought back Matt Short and Gurjapneet Singh.
Ruturaj said that the decision was made on match combinations and one expected Short to be used as a bowling option. However, the Aussie all-rounder never got a chance to come in and bowl.
Gill and Sudharsan good memories while facing CSK in Ahmedabad, as the duo scored hundreds in a 210-run stand back in 2024. And the way they started out, it seemed like Chennai was in for a deja vu moment.
The duo made a flying start, which ended up hurting CSK in more ways than one. They lost Sanju Samson early on to a finger injury and he was off the field. It seemed the guidance from behind the stumps seemed to be missing as the Chennai bowlers struggled to find any inspiration on a track that looked like a belter.
The result was Gill and Sudharsan piling on 62 runs in the powerplay. With the absence of a spin partner, Noor Ahmad struggled back at his former stomping ground, as he was welcomed with a six by Gill.
The one thing that the GT skipper has done this season is to be more aggressive in his approach and he was putting the Chennai bowlers to the sword.
He reached his fifty with a six off Noor and in 23 balls. Sudharsan wasn’t to be left behind in terms of the big-hitting and he took on Anhsul Kamboj, who seemed like he was still left in the shock he got in Lucknow.
Sudharsan got to his fifty in 35 balls, putting him in an elite list of batters to score five consecutive fifties in the IPL. There seemed to be no hurry from the GT batters. It looked calm, calculated and without any chaos.
But Gill’s innings ended in the 13th over and that gave Sudharsan and Buttler the license to go for the kill.
The duo ensured that Noor conceded 22 runs in the third over and the Afghan spinner wasn’t called back to bowl another one. But that left the rest of the CSK pacers to the onslaught.
They conceded 78 runs in the last six overs. Kamboj’s time in the IPL went from bad to worse as he got the unwanted record of conceding the most sixes in a single edition of the IPL with 34 maximums next to his name.
Once Buttler also got to his fifty and powered the total to 230, it seemed CSK missed a trick by not having another spinner in the mix.
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