Rashid Khan redeemed himself in the space of four deliveries and Umran Malik dismantled four sets of stumps in the same match.
Meanwhile, Chennai Super Kings have gone back to their leader-forever MS Dhoni after six defeats under the titular authority of Ravindra Jadeja.
The Sporting News take our weekly look at the Indian Premier League.
Rashid’s redemption
Debutants Gujarat Titans’ surprise reign at the top of the points table continues, despite some basic deficiencies with their squad that had been pointed out by experts after the big auction.
Luck has played its part, and its role has been acknowledged by no less than captain Hardik Pandya himself.
But the Titans have also made their own luck, chiefly through the spunk of their middle order comprising David Miller, Rahul Tewatia and Rashid Khan.
Miller and Tewatia have revived a flagging innings on several occasions now, and Rashid made at least his second decisive intervention with the bat last Wednesday night against Sunrisers Hyderabad at Wankhede Stadium.
Rashid had had his most forgettable match of the season on the field - two missed chances and his most expensive spell (0/45) of the tournament as his former team-mate Abhishek Sharma went after him.
Tewatia performed his usual late livewire act with the bat, but with 15 needed off the last four balls, the responsibility came to Rashid. He was up against the beanpole Marco Jansen, fresh from a Player of the Match performance in his previous game.
The field was moved around, and the Afghan veteran was wise to it; Jansen served up two deliveries full and wide, and Rashid launched them straight and over extra cover for sixes.
Needing three off the final ball, Rashid’s response to a short ball into his body was to swing it over fine leg for his third six in four deliveries.
Job done, Rashid raised his arms towards his dugout, having well and truly redeemed himself in the space of a few minutes.
Umran’s stump-shattering surge
Rashid’s last-ball match-stealing heroics took the focus momentarily away from arguably the standout show of the league so far - Umran Malik’s furiously quick spell of 4-0-25-5.
Nearly everyone in his path that night had his stumps rearranged, only Pandya was bounced out. It didn’t matter whether a batter was batting on a half-century (Wriddhiman Saha) or had just come in (Abhinav Manohar).
In Manohar’s case, the bat had not even completed its downward defensive push but the ball had already shot past to crash into the stumps.
Delivering one thunderbolt after another above 150kph, Umran almost made the batters irrelevant to his target practice.
What has got the country excited about this young Kashmiri talent is that he is using only speed to dislodge batters. He is so raw he is yet to learn to properly swing or seam the ball. And he is already often unplayable.
It is staggering to imagine just how good he could get, but that will require him to be treated like the rare, precious commodity he is: a fast bowler genuinely capable of consistently bowling at 95 miles an hour.
Already, there is talk of the need to manage his workload under the guidance of the VVS Laxman-led National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru.
Some even want him to travel with the Indian squad to England a couple of months from now for the deciding match of the Test series!
Nothing gets the cricket world more excited than an express pacer who uproots stumps for fun.
The CSK captaincy mess
The more things change, the more they remain the same. Or if it is Chennai Super Kings, they remain the same and only appear to change, and after a while, drop the pretense of the appearance as well.
Just before the start of IPL 2022, CSK had announced that the leadership baton had passed to Ravindra Jadeja after 14 seasons under MS Dhoni.
But just over halfway into the season, after six losses and only two wins, the franchise announced that Jadeja had relinquished the captaincy and Dhoni had taken it up again in the interest of the team.
And right away, under their new-old leader, CSK beat Sunrisers for their third win.
Trust Dhoni to come up with some verbal gems in such situations.
“You don't want him (Jadeja) to feel that the captaincy was done by somebody else and I was just going for the toss.”
Or this one - “Spoon-feeding doesn't really help the captain.”
Well, MS, watching from the outside, it did appear that Jadeja’s on-field leadership responsibilities began and ended with the toss.
As always, at a franchise that is almost an extension of his own personality, it was Dhoni who had been setting the field and ringing in the bowling changes, even while Jadeja was the nominal captain.
For instance, Jadeja had thrown the ball to someone else during a game, but Dhoni came up to him and convinced the left-arm spinner to bring himself on instead. Of course, only one man’s will prevails, and has always prevailed, at CSK.
In a forced attempt at handing over the baton without really creating any second rung of leadership over the years, CSK have ended up losing Jadeja the batter, the bowler and the fielder this season.
As is being seen, the Saurashtra allrounder does not seem to be cut out for captaincy. He already has more than enough on his plate, with bat and ball, plus the reputation of being one of the finest fielders in the world to protect.
And so, CSK are back to where they began in 2008 - with Dhoni. And word is that Captain Cool could still conjure a turnaround in the side’s fortunes.