Gujarat Titans captain Shubman Gill was not part of the team’s squad for the IPL 2026 clash against Rajasthan Royals at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad on Saturday (April 4). Leg-spinner Rashid Khan stood in for him at the toss and said Gill was suffering from a ‘muscle spasm’.
“He just got a bit of a muscle spasm, hopefully he’ll be back soon,” Rashid said.
Jharkhand’s young wicketkeeper-batter Kumar Kushagra, who has been with GT since IPL 2025, was given his Titans debut cap to replace Gill.
“I feel that in the last game as well, it was a very close game, but there were some of the areas we need to improve in our bowling and also our batting,” Rashid said at the toss. “And we spoke a lot about that in the meetings, and we just need to bring
our A-game here and give our 100%. So I feel like we did really well in the last game as well, but we take the positive things from that and we keep improving our skills in our game.”
GT’s playing 11 without Shubman Gill
Kumar Kushagra, Sai Sudharsan, Jos Buttler (wk), Glenn Phillips, Washington Sundar, Rahul Tewatia, Rashid Khan (c), Kagiso Rabada, Ashok Sharma, Mohammed Siraj and Prasidh Krishna
Who is Kumar Kushagra?
Kushagra has played for the Delhi Capitals in the IPL. He impressed Sourav Ganguly in the pre-2024 season nets, and the Capitals splurged INR 7.20 crore on him, though he managed just three runs in four matches.
The youngster idolises MS Dhoni and Ishan Kishan and, following their footsteps, loves to bat aggressively. It needs to be seen where he’ll bat, though, because he’s comfortable across positions. He’s an excellent player of spin, and Jharkhand and North-East teams have seen him perform exceptionally under pressure. Overall, he has scored 676 runs in 30 domestic T20s with an excellent strike-rate of 145.68.
GT has the services of Jos Buttler to use at the top of the order, but Kushagra could be an interesting choice to begin the powerplay overs with a headstart.
