You’ve got to feel for Hashim Amla. He gets his second century of the IPL season and ends up on the losing side again. Amla scored a classy 104 off 60 balls to guide Kings XI Punjab to 189/3 at the end of their 20 overs but then saw a poor fielding effort from his team help Gujarat Lions overhaul the total with a few balls to spare. Dwayne Smith chipped in 74 for Gujarat but had two lives to thank for that.

Here’s a look at the best moments of the match:

All about Amla

Hashim Amla did not have a century in his first 111 T20 innings. Now he has scored 2 centuries in 5 innings. He has adapted — not so much his technique as his mindset and the results are there for everyone to see. There is no slogging, just splendid timing and lazy elegance and for much of the 125-run stand with Shaun Marsh, we saw a lot of that. Amla was scoring at a fair clip at that point but it was in the company of Maxwell that he truly blossomed. And one shot in particular showed just how much time he has to play his shots. It was against Basil Thampi. By now, Amla was trying to be creative — he shuffled across the stumps, looking to scoop it over fine leg. Thampi saw him and pushed it wide off the off-stump, make it impossible to hit over fine leg. But Amla didn’t even skip a heartbeat. He just opened the bat face and scooped it fine of the fielder at short third man. It was the kind of shot that only batsmen of the highest caliber can play and to think that till two years ago many thought he couldn’t play T20 cricket.

Amla was typically low key after the innings: “Everyone has a unique style. For me, personally, it is about keeping things simple.”

That might be true but there is nothing simple about what Amla himself is doing. Amla’s season run rate of 8.74 runs per over is higher than players such as Brendon McCullum, Suresh Raina, Ben Stokes, Kieron Pollard, AB de Villiers, Krunal Pandya & Nitish Rana.

And if all of that wasn’t enough, he also walked after edging it! When did you last see that happen in T20 cricket.

Lucky Smith

Dwayne Smith has had a horrid IPL season. It has been so bad that even after today’s 39-ball 74 today, his season average is just 19.66. So ideally when you have a man down, you do your best to keep him there. Instead, KXIP decided to give the big West Indian a helping hand. He was dropped on 42 by David Miller — an easy, easy catch that should have been caught. Smith responded by smashing one for six in the next over and getting to fifty off 28 balls. And then again, he was dropped on 51. That really was asking for punishment.

Raina’s maturity

Raina could have got carried away but his innings showed just why he is one of the most valuable players in the IPL. This will be the first season that he will not make it to the knockout stage. Gurkeerat Singh, one of the better fielders in domestic cricket, didn’t help matters by dropping him. But in the end, his 39 off 25 balls played a crucial role in getting his side closer to the target.

Gurkeerat’s nightmare

The two dropped catches early in the innings were bad enough but then with Gujarat needing 8 runs off 6 balls, Gurkeerat’s throw led to an overthrow. The first ball of the over yielded 3 runs and that pretty much ended KXIP’s chances.

Skipper Glenn Maxwell put it best: “Pretty average night. To have a guy score a 100 and not be able to celebrate a win is pretty devastating,” Glenn Maxwell says. “189 was enough, the bowlers and fielders let us down. We dropped three crucial catches. We haven’t won a heap of games in a row. We’ve had to scrap.”

Gujarat are chasers

Gujarat have been knocked out of the tournament but they can still be deadly on the day. Especially, if they are chasing. Once the bowling has done all the damage it possible can, the batsmen step up to the mark and quite consistently do well. The batting has been solid and if anything it shows how the team management got the bowling line-up very, very wrong.