How Gujarat Titans quietly took over IPL 2026
No 250 totals. No viral over. No individual season for the highlight reels. Just a team that keeps finding ten runs more than the opposition.
By Saurav Kumar Nanda · Friday, 8 May 2026
Gujarat Titans are top of the IPL 2026 table and almost nobody is talking about them. That is not an accident. It is roughly how the franchise has always preferred it, and it is worth understanding why a team can dominate a season without ever feeling like the story.
The absence of a headline
There has been no individual Gujarat season for the highlight packages. No batter has gone past 70 in a viral innings. No bowler has produced the over that gets clipped and shared. Shubman Gill has scored heavily, but at a strike rate that flatters the result more than the eye. The team has not posted 250. It has not needed to.
What Gujarat have done instead is win the middle overs, repeatedly, in a way that does not photograph well. They take a wicket when a partnership is building. They bowl a quiet over when the opposition needs a loud one. They are, game after game, about ten runs better than the team across from them.
Gujarat do not win matches dramatically. They win them early, in overs nobody remembers.
A method, not a moment
When the franchise won the title in its debut season, the method was unfashionable then too: pick bowlers who hit lengths, batters who finish, and let a calm dressing room do the rest. Ashish Nehra built a side around control rather than chaos, and control is a strategy that compounds across a fourteen-game league.
Rashid Khan remains the most economical front-line spinner in the competition, which means the middle overs are quietly being won before the opposition realises a phase has even started. The seam attack hits lengths instead of chasing wickets, and on the long boundaries of the Narendra Modi Stadium, lengths are enough.
The risk in being boring
There is one danger in a team this controlled. In a knockout, on a flat pitch, against an opponent having the night of their lives, control can look like a lack of a sixth gear. Gujarat have not yet had to find a way to win a shootout in IPL 2026. That examination is still to come. But a side that wins the league stage by understanding the middle overs has earned the right to be taken seriously, even if it refuses to be exciting about it.