Gujarat Titans leave out Lockie Ferguson, bring back Matthew Wade in 'tactical' move

IPL 2022, LSG vs GT: Gujarat Titans captain Hardik Pandya made three changes to his team in the match against Lucknow Super Giants. LSG also made one change, bringing in Karan Sharma in place of Ravi Bishnoi.

Gujarat Titans made three changes to their playing XI in their match against Lucknow Super Giants at the MCA Stadium on Tuesday. GT skipper Hardik Pandya said they made the tactical move because of the ground dynamics.

After Hardik Pandya won the toss and decided to bat against LSG, he said the team had left out Lockie Ferguson, Sai Sudharsan and Pradeep Sangwan. Instead, Matthew Wade who was dropped after a string of failures, was brought back into the playing XI. Yash Dhayal made a comeback too while Sai Kishore was handed a debut.

"Three changes for us (tonight)... No Lockie. Wade comes in. Sai Sudharsan doesn't play. Sangwan out, Yash Dayal in, as is Sai Kishore. Tactical, looking at the ground dynamics," Hardik Pandya told Star Sports after winning the toss.

Gujarat Titans were on top of the points table but slipped to No.2 after back-to-back defeats but Hardik Pandya was confident ahead of their second match against Lucknow Super Giants this season.

GT, like LSG, are just one win away from cementing a playoffs berth and Hardik said the idea was to put up some runs on the board and banked on his side's ability to bounce back from tricky situations. Pandya added that his team needed to forget about the recent defeats because the tournament was far from over.

"(We) want to put up some runs, the wicket looks alright for the entire duration of the game. The wicket has played some role, batting first here - teams have won plenty of games.

"We want to get a score on the board. We have won some 5 games we were looking like losing, we need to forget the last couple of losses, learn from those things, the tournament isn't over as yet," he said.