The Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) have travelled to Ahmedabad for the reserve fixture against the Gujarat Titans (GT), but the visitors do not have their regular skipper KL Rahul, who has been ruled out of the 2023 Indian Premier League (IPL) season. So, instead, the team will be led by Krunal Pandya for the rest of the season.
In fact, this is the first time that two brothers are leading their teams against each other in the IPL. They are only the second set of brothers to be opposing captains in T20s. Before this, the Hussey brothers faced off twice in the 2015-16 BBL - Mike Hussey for Sydney Thunder and David Hussey for Melbourne Stars.
This happened in the 51st match of the season at the Narendra Modi Stadium. So far, the IPL has seen six different pairs of brothers playing against each other:
1. Irfan Pathan-Yusuf Pathan
2. Sam Curran-Tom Curran,
3. Shaun Marsh-Mitchell Marsh
4. Rahul Chahar-Deepak Chahar
5. Marco Jansen-Duan Jansen
6. Albie Morkel-Morne Morkel
But this is the first time that two brothers will be facing each other as captains —Hardik Pandya and Krunal Pandya.
Pandya vs Pandya
Hardik Pandya has been the captain of the Gujarat Titans since their inception ahead of IPL 2022 and led them to the trophy in 2022. We have seen both brothers playing together in Team India but this time it will be interesting to see whose strategy will prevail in the end.
Gujarat on top
The Gujarat Titans (GT) is currently on top of the points table after beating the Rajasthan Royals by 9 wickets with 37 balls remaining. While LSG has hit the highest score of this season against PBKS, i.e. 257 runs. But the team could not even score 126 runs against RCB. Apart from this, the lowest score of the Gujarat team is 125.
Talking about the Narendra Modi Stadium, a lot of runs are expected to be scored on this pitch. The Lucknow team will miss their skipper a lot as Rahul has been ruled out of the entire IPL due to a thigh injury. On the other hand, Gujarat has got 3 defeats so far and they have got all three on the ground of Ahmedabad. In such a situation, it will be the endeavour of Lucknow to strengthen its hopes of knowing in the playoffs by defeating Gujarat.
Performance of the brothers
Talking about Hardik Pandya's performance, he is doing brilliantly in terms of captaincy but is falling short with the bat. Hardik has scored only 246 runs in 9 matches at an average of 36. He has only 2 half-centuries to his name so far. On the other hand, Krunal Pandya has scored a total of 122 runs in 10 matches with an average of 17.43. Apart from this, in bowling, Hardik has taken only three wickets and Krunal has taken six wickets.
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