For the first time ever in Indian Premier League history, the two brothers of the Pandya family – Hardik Pandya and Krunal Pandya came face to face against each other. For so many years they had been playing together in the Indian Premier League for Mumbai Indians but this year the franchise did not retain both of them and while Hardik Pandya was drafted and made the captain by Gujarat Titans, Krunal Pandya was bought by Lucknow Super Giants for a whopping price of 8.25 crores. Gujarat Titans were in the bidding war in the IPL 2022 Mega Auction for Krunal Pandya as well but he ended up going to Lucknow Super Giants.
Last night, the two new franchises Lucknow Super Giants and Gujarat Titans faced off against each other in the Wankhede Stadium and it was the first ever IPL match of both the franchises. It was brother vs brother as Hardik Pandya was going up against Krunal Pandya and it was already expected to be a very high intensity match and the players did not disappoint us.
Gujarat Titans won the toss and opted to field first obviously the dew factor comes into play in the second innings as Wankhede Stadium and as we have been seeing in the IPL 2022 so far, the team who won the toss won the match as well.
Gujarat Titans got a brilliant start thanks to 3 quick wickets by Mohammad Shami and it looked like LSG would not even be able to reach the score of 100. However, Deepak Hooda and Ayush Badoni played brilliantly and took the score to 158/6. Krunal Pandya played a good cameo of 21 off 13.
However, the most important moment of the match was seen in the second innings when Gujarat Titans was batting. Hardik Pandya came up to bat and after scoring 33 runs, he was up against his own brother Krunal Pandya. Krunal picked up his wicket and did not celebrate he was just smiling with his hands covering his face. From the stands, Hardik’s wife Natasha Stankovic gave a brilliant reaction as well.