Hardik hopes Gujarat won’t repeat ‘basic errors’

Chennai: You knew it the moment seamer Darshan Nalkande was called for overstepping. Inflexion points rarely come this early in cricket but in a big match, with such fine margins, one no-ball in the second over was enough to turn the tide.Gujarat Titans’ experienced campaigners Mohammed Shami and Mohit Sharma continued to bowl with discipline and kept trying to stem the run-flow, but once CSK had notched up 50-odd for no loss in the powerplay, it was always an uphill battle. GT skipper Hardik Pandya too rued the early mistake that proved decisive. "We were quite spot on with the ball but made some basic errors. And I think that cost us the game,” he said after the match. The extra runs accrued made the difference in the end. “I think we did a lot of things right, but bowled a couple of soft balls in between. We must've conceded 16 runs or so due to our soft balls,” Pandya said. He felt that surplus reflected precisely in the margin of defeat — 15 runs. “After the first innings, the kind of wicket and at the same point of time the kind of bowlers we had, I felt we exactly went 15 runs above the score where we should have stopped them,” the India allrounder added.A chase of 173 on a sticky wicket needed at least one big partnership, and in the absence of that partnership, GT were always behind the eight ball. With Ravindra Jadeja turning the ball big and Maheesh Theekshana complementing him with his bag of tricks, the visitors needed Pandya or the big-hitting David Miller to hang in there alongside Shubman Gill. That did not happen, and the game slipped from their grasp."It is just about losing a wicket at the wrong time. Maybe a partnership of 20, 30 runs in the middle could have got us closer to the game," GT impact substitute Vijay Shankar said in the post-match presser. Shankar cited his own dismissal as an example. "Even the over that I got out, I felt I could have calculated a little better. I could have targeted in a better way,” he added.It was just one of those days for GT, who have performed consistently enough in the competition for Tuesday’s performance to be termed an aberration. They will look to brush off the disappointment and gear up for Qualifier-2. Pandya summed it up well: “We gave 15 runs extra, kept losing wickets, and that's the reason I am talking to you right now (as the losing captain). Two days later we will give it a crack again.”