New Delhi, May 26 (IANS) Former Sunrisers Hyderabad head coach Tom Moody believes a number of Gujarat Titans’ bowlers losing form at the wrong time in the IPL 2025 season is concerning, adding that the side hasn’t been able to stitch effective bowling partnerships.

At the Narendra Modi Stadium on Sunday afternoon, GT lost by 83 runs to bottom-placed Chennai Super Kings (CSK). Barring Prasidh Krishna taking 2-22 in his four overs, the rest of the bowlers recorded their respective economy rates in double digits.

“It is a concern that a number of their bowlers are losing form at the wrong time. Coming into the finals, one area of your game you want to be absolutely confident with is your bowling attack and everyone not looking over their shoulder but looking to take the responsibility themselves.”

“And I look at their attack and really there’s only one bowler that’s bowling well and the rest are trying to find form. And that’s probably being a little bit harsh on Sai Kishore because I think he’s been quite consistent, but it’s nearly like his bowling has been swept away along with many other bowlers purely because they haven’t been able to build the most important thing, and that’s those partnerships with the ball,” said Moody on ESPNcricinfo.

To solve GT’s bowling issues, Moddy thinks the Shubman Gill-led side should look to open the bowling with left-arm spinner Sai Kishore. “I just wonder, just sowing a seed for moving forward, whether they need to actually rearrange their bowling attack.”

“Maybe do something out of the box, like open with Sai Kishore, you know, have an over or two of them. He’s well-equipped to be able to do that, and it just gives them that little bit of a point of difference as a bowling unit.”

Moody signed off by saying it is not the time for GT to press a panic button in their IPL 2025 campaign. “Players need to have that sort of free mind and not sort of worrying about the consequences of what’s happened in the past or what may happen if we fall down that same track as what we did in our last two games.”

“So, again, it’s preserving confidence, preserving the culture that you’ve built within that playing group. So you’re celebrating that and you’re trying to keep everyone upbeat and positive, because at the end of the day, there’s a lot of tired bodies, there’s a lot of mental fatigue there as well. So you need to be mindful of all those things to make sure that everyone’s feeling really positive about what’s ahead of them.”

“For all the teams, at this time, it’s not the time to press that panic button. It’s the time to reflect on what are we really doing well and focusing on those areas and highlighting them and celebrating those areas and just quietly going about trying to patch up a couple of gaps without it being sort of seen in a public domain.”

“Whether it be through the press or whether it be in the dressing room in front of the whole squad – ‘we must be improving here and here and these are the gaps we’re missing out on’, you know, just quietly going around on a one-to-one basis and reassuring players but also just reminding them of a couple of areas that just might need a little bit of sharpening,” he concluded.

–IANS

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