Why is Shubman Gill not playing against the Rajasthan Royals? Rashid Khan steps up as captain for Gujarat Titans
Shubman Gill will miss the match against the Rajasthan Royals for the Gujarat Titans. Here's why.
Shubman Gill, the Gujarat Titans captain, has a muscle spasm and hence was ruled out of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026 match against the Rajasthan Royals at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad on Saturday. The decision was confirmed at the toss when Rashid Khan came out to the middle for the toss. Gill had played the opening match against the Punjab Kings and was also a part of the training sessions ahead of the fixture against Rajasthan.
However, everyone was left shocked when Gill did not come out, and one saw Rashid in his place at the toss. “Gill has a muscle spasm; hopefully, he will be back soon,” Rashid told the broadcaster at the toss.
The contest between the Rajasthan Royals and Gujarat Titans saw the Royals win the toss and opt to bat. This was the first time in the IPL 2026 edition that any captain opted to bat first after winning the flip of the coin. Rajasthan made two changes to their playing XI, while Gujarat also rang in changes because of Gill's last-minute injury.
Gill is no stranger to injuries. The previous year, the Indian Test and ODI captain suffered a neck spasm in the middle of the first Test against the Proteas, which ruled him out of the next Test and the subsequent ODI series against the same opponent. However, he marked his return in the three-match ODI series against New Zealand.
Coming back to the IPL 2026, Gill had scored 39 runs in the Gujarat Titans' opening match against the Punjab Kings. The 2022 champions gave a tough fight to Shreyas Iyer and co, but in the end, Cooper Connolly's knock led to PBKS winning the match and Gujarat coming up short.
On the other hand, Rajasthan won their opening match after giving an eight-wicket hiding to the five-time champions Chennai Super Kings.
What did Rashid Khan say at the toss?
Gujarat's stand-in captain Rashid said his team is looking to put the defeat in the previous game behind them and move forward in the tournament.
“I feel in the last game as well, it was a very close game, but some of the areas we need to improve are our bowling and also our batting. And we spoke a lot about that in the meetings, and we need to bring our A-game here and give our 100 per cent. 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,” said Rashid.
Playing XIs of both GT and RR
Rajasthan Royals: Yashasvi Jaiswal, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Dhruv Jurel(w), Riyan Parag(c), Shimron Hetmyer, Donovan Ferreira, Ravindra Jadeja, Jofra Archer, Nandre Burger, Tushar Deshpande, Sandeep Sharma.
Impact sub list: Ravi Bishnoi, Lhuan-dre Pretorius, Shubham Dubey, Brijesh Sharma, Ravi Singh.
Gujarat Titans: Kumar Kushagra, Sai Sudharsan, Jos Buttler(w), Glenn Phillips, Washington Sundar, Rahul Tewatia, Rashid Khan(c), Kagiso Rabada, Ashok Sharma, Mohammed Siraj, Prasidh Krishna.
Impact sub list: Shahrukh Khan, Jason Holder, Manav Suthar, Anuj Rawat, Jayant Yadav.