Rashid Khan is having a great IPL 2023 season. He has 23 wickets, which makes him tied for the most in the league. The Afghanistan player was also a key part of the winning 2022 season for the Gujarat Titans (GT). Recently, the wrist spinner talked about leading Gujarat without Hardik Pandya in match 29 of the 2022 season.
The 24-year-old said that being in charge of an IPL team during the holy month of Ramadan was like a dream come true. Rashid was in charge of Gujarat when they played the reigning champions, CSK.
Rashid Khan had a great game with the bat, which helped his team win.
“That was a special game because it was my first game as captain in the IPL, and it happened during Ramadan. I got up at 3 a.m. for early prayer. Ashish Nehra sent me a message that said, “Rashid Khan sahab, get ready. Hardik may not play because he is sick. It was both exciting and stressful. Rashid said on the Gujarat Titans show that it was a dream.
The Afghanistan star also said that he couldn’t sleep the night before the game because everything was going through his mind. He also said that he had been the captain of Afghanistan before, but that IPL was different.
“I’m from Afghanistan, and tomorrow I’ll be in charge of an IPL team in India. When I tried to go to sleep, everything kept coming to my mind. I was thinking about what I would say at the toss and how I would feel. I’d been in charge of Afghanistan before, but it’s different to be in charge of a team in the IPL,” he said.
Coming back to the game, when CSK batted first, Ruturaj Gaikwad hit 73 runs off 48 balls, which helped them reach a total of 169/5. In response, GT was 87/5 after 12.4 overs. Rashid (40 runs off 21 balls) and David Miller (94 runs off 51 balls) then put together a stand of 70 runs off 37 balls, which helped GT reach the target in 19.5 overs and win by three wickets.
Rashid was also the captain of GT during their third game in IPL 2023, which was against the Kolkata Knight Riders in Ahmedabad. The wrist spinner ended up getting a hat trick during the game and finished with figures of 3/37 in four overs. But Rinku Singh (48* off 21) trumped him by hitting Yash Dayal for five straight sixes in the last over, which helped KKR pull off an unlikely win.
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