England star Jos Buttler has revealed how his embarrassment from the first innings in Gujarat Titans’ victory over the Royal Challengers Bengaluru led him to play a match-winning innings with the bat at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium on Wednesday. Buttler scored an unbeaten 73 off 39 balls as the Gujarat Titans chased down RCB’s target of 170 runs with eight wickets in hand and 13 balls to spare.
Buttler said that he was left embarrassed by dropping RCB’s Phil Salt in the first over of the RCB innings.
“I thought our bowlers did a fantastic job,” Buttler had said. “We probably, if we fielded it a bit better, myself, looking at myself very much so, then we would have been chasing a few less. I was pretty embarrassed, especially with [dropping] Salty. He’s a dangerous player. So the only thing I can think of, I was trying to throw it up to earlier, a bit like Herschelle Gibbs style [who had famously dropped Steve Waugh during the 1999 World Cup] but I didn’t even… I barely got a glove on it, it hit me in the chest. But due to that embarrassment, I was pretty determined to try and score some runs.”
RCB are now third in the IPL 2025 standings after losing their first game of the season which just happened to be their first home game this year. Gujarat Titans, meanwhile, are in fourth spot with a similar win-loss record as that of RCB.
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Buttler’s performance for Gujarat Titans earned him praise from Kane Williamson.
“There’s always something refreshing about joining a new team, and that’s what Jos Buttler got here at Gujarat Titans. It’s a great environment. What I’m really enjoying about Jos at the moment is that, while many big hitters in other teams are looking to hit every ball for six, he remains totally committed to and trusting of his game plan. Over the last eight years, he has consistently been one of the top batters and a match-winner in world cricket. We saw that again this evening, and it bodes really well for GT going forward in the tournament,” Williamson said on JioStar.