This year’s IPL finals saw the newly banded Gujarat Titans beat the veteran former champions  Rajasthan Royals by 7 wickets to become the IPL 2022 champions on Sunday, May 29th at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

This year IPL 2022  started with the inclusion of two new teams, namely the Lucknow Super Giants and the Gujarat Titans.

 Apart from the titans that ultimately made their way to the finals and ended up lifting the trophy, the other new team I.e the Lucknow Super Giants also did exceedingly well.  They too managed to reach the eliminators in their inaugural year before ultimately losing to Bangalore. 

The IPL final was set up for a spectacular clash between the Titans and the  Royals who had just earlier met in the playoffs  of the first qualifier game. In that game GT won and headed straight to the finals. The Royals then made their own entry into the finals by defeating RCB in the second qualifier game.

The venue for Sunday’s clash was the Narendra Modi cricket stadium in Ahmedabad,  also known as  the largest cricket stadium in the world. Having their state’s team playing in the finals only added to the craze as a record crowd of more than 104,800 people turned up for the match held in Ahemdabad.

 The IPL also managed to enter the Guinness Book of World Records for ‘the biggest cricket jersey in the world’. 

The atmosphere of that fateful night was electrifying. The home game for the Gujarat Titans attracted many celebrities, Home Minister Amit Shah, Actors Akshay Kumar, Ranveer Singh and music legend A.R. Rahman were some of the big names present.

The stage was set, RR had won the toss and put themselves to bat first. The Royals never really got going and kept losing wickets at regular intervals.

 Hardik Pandya, the Gujarat captain was sublime with the ball.  3/17 were his figures at the end of his four overs. The Rajasthan royals could only manage to put up 130 on the board in their 20 overs. When the Titans came out to bat next, their start was a bit shaky and that tension provided peak entertainment as expected from an IPL final. The Titans eventually got going, courtesy of the partnership between Gill and the captain Pandya. Hardik got out and that led to the arrival of David Miller to the strike who was having the best ipl season of his life. Miller accelerated the scoring rate and with Gill’s six the match’s end was sealed. 

Rajasthan Royals, the inaugural  champions who had never been to any ipl finals  since, suffered a defeat from the Gujarat side who managed to get a hold onto the ipl trophy in their very first year in the league.