Kings XI defeats Deccan Chargers

A powerful start from the top four, followed by nerveless hands from Mahela Jayawardene and Brett Lee stole the thunder from Andrew Symonds' first IPL game, setting up Kings XI Punjab's win over the Deccan Chargers at the Kimberley Oval. The win won't take Punjab into the top four but they will hope it is an end to their poor run of three losses in the last four games. This was the game of the two returning Australians, Symonds and Lee, and though both starred, only one prevailed as the match went down to the final over.

Jayawardene had taken Punjab to 20 short of the win in the 18th over when he was run out for a measured 43, setting up a tense finale. Nineteen were required off 12 balls; Piyush Chawla and Lee collected three runs off the first three before Lee eased the pressure with a searing six over long-off. Two more singles meant Punjab needed eight off the last over and the game looked over as Chawla hooked a four off RP Singh's first ball. But RP hit back, leaving three needed off the final three. Lee scrambled two to long-off before finishing it off with one ball left.

Punjab's top four had added runs and lost wickets in pairs, but they set up the chase with 86 in first ten overs. The openers, Sunny Sohal and Simon Katich, gave their side an explosive start of 44 in four overs, before falling within two balls of each other to Rohit Sharma, fresh from four wickets in five balls earlier this week. Kumar Sangakkara and Yuvraj Singh diluted his effect, milking 11 from his second over. They also went after Symonds - taking 20 in one over - before being dismissed within two balls of each other to Shoaib Ahmed just before the strategy break. In trying to contain them, Deccan had used seven bowlers by then, with only Rohit bowling two successive overs.

After the break, Pragyan Ojha bowled two tight overs after which Gilchrist brought T Suman into the attack and was immediately rewarded with Irfan Pathan's wicket, swinging the game in Deccan's favour once again. But Jayawardene kept Punjab in the hunt with successive sixes, before Lee finished it off.

Earlier, Symonds' power-hitting had taken Deccan to a competitive 168, though a slow-down mid-innings - they added four runs for the loss of two wickets between overs 10 and 12 - was probably the eventual difference. Deccan owed their quick start - 44 in the first five overs - to Gilchrist, Suman and several Punjab misfields. Gilchrist hit Pathan for two fours in his first over, then pulled Sreesanth's first ball for a six before falling in the same over.

Suman came in and attacked right from the start, picking Pathan off his pads for six and also getting runs off edges. After Herschelle Gibbs fell, cutting Chawla to Jayawardene at backward point, Suman and Rohit began building on the quick start. They rotated the strike and picked boundaries off anything short - Chawla was hit for a six to long-off by Suman and lofted for four to wide midwicket by Rohit in an over that cost 12 runs.

A bowling change in the tenth over ended Suman's innings and it looked like Deccan were losing the plot before Symonds broke the shackles. After Yuvraj Singh missed a caught-and-bowled chance off him, Symonds picked a short ball by Piyush Chawla for a six over midwicket. Deccan crossed 100 in the 15th over after which he began attacking in earnest. Irfan Pathan went for 13 runs and Sreesanth for 20 - including consecutive sixes over long-on and long-off -as Symonds reached his fifty off 29 balls.

But for the second time in the IPL, Symonds played a big innings and ended up on the losing side.

As Expected Delhi Daredevils Win

Delhi Daredevils reclaimed their position at the top of the DLF Indian Premier League ladder with a seven-wicket victory over Mumbai Indians at the Buffalo Park here on Friday but they will be the first to concede that they did not manage the chase of 117-run target too well.

Playing their third successive match without the injured captain Virender Sehwag, Delhi Daredevils relied too much on David Warner’s aggression to get off to a flying start but he found the boundaries hard to come by. Dhawal Kulkarni had bowled a great spell with the new ball when he conceded just nine runs in three overs.

Lasith Malinga went for a few runs but Dwayne Bravo backed up Kulkarni’s effort with an over in which he gave away only two runs, setting the stage for the off-spinners to come on. Jean Paul Duminy and Harbhajan Singh bowled in tandem and brilliantly at that, the first flighting the ball and getting much turn and the Indian off-spinner pushing the ball through.

The Mumbai Indians off-spinners tied down the Delhi Daredevils so well, conceding just 36 runs in their eight overs, that Sachin Tendulkar was tempted to introduce himself after a chat with both these bowlers. The score read 74 for two in 15 overs – Delhi Daredevils needed 43 runs in the final five overs.

To his horror, Tendulkar did not find the right length. AB de Villiers flicked the flighted first delivery between mid-on and mid-wicket; the next ball was a full toss that AB gleefully put away for six over mid-wicket; the third delivery was pitched way too short and the batsman sent it to the mid-wicket fence. The match, as a contest, was effectively over.

AB reconfirmed that with another powerful pull off the fifth delivery that was way too short and the Tendulkar over finished with him conceding 19 runs to the Delhi Daredevils. Rohan Raje bowled three dot balls at the start of the 16th over but went for 11 runs off the next three balls, with Tillekeratne Dishan stroking the last two balls for fours. That sealed it.

Earlier, Mumbai Indians were unable to recover from a disastrous start. On a day when they had decided to drop Sanath Jayasuriya and field Like Ronchi in his place, the Australian wicket-keeper batsman was run out off the second ball, coming second best to Warner’s under-arm throw from cover.

As if that were not enough, the other opener Duminy was drawn to a beautiful outswinger from Dirk Nannes and was caught by wicket-keeper Dinesh Karthik and Mumbai Indians openers were both back in the hut in the first over itself. Tendulkar was run out by a direct hit from behind the stumps when he set off for a single without realising where he had played the ball.

Bravo played a lone hand, making 35 runs but the total was never going to challenge Delhi Daredevils – or so we thought until the Gautam Gambhir-led team responded so slowly and nearly made a hash of the chase.

For all that, with a sixth win in eight games, Delhi Daredevils moved to the top of the table with 12 points while Mumbai Indians wallow in the seventh place, with seven points from nine matches and needing to win all their remaining five games to stay in the reckoning for the semifinals.

Clinical batting & Lacklustre bowling nevertheless Chennai wins

A million thoughts and a handful of emotions raged in Mahendra Singh Dhoni's mind but he had the calmness to pluck the best thought and press in to action in a crisis situation: He summoned Suresh Raina to bowl his brand of off-spin against a rampaging Yuvraj Singh and Mahela Jayawardene and was rewarded with a spell that read 2-0-8-0.

In a heady DLF Indian Premier League match, reduced by rain to 18 overs a side but one that was marked by 17 sixes as the highlight of some cavalier batting by either team, Raina's bowling figures were like the oasis in a desert and played no mean role in helping Chennai Super Kings scrape through to a 12-run victory over Kings XI Punjab.

Taking first strike, Chennai Super Kings lost S Badrinath to the first ball from Irfan Pathan but Matthew Hayden's amazingly powerful 89 (58 balls, eight fours, six sixes), Raiana's quickfire 32 (20 balls) and Dhoni's second successive half-century powered Chennai Super Kings to 185 for three off 18 overs on either side of a longish rain break.

Simon Katich took upon himself the task of launching Kings XI Punjab's chase of the revised target of 187. He waded into the Chennai Super Kings bowlers and ran up 50 off 25 balls (three fours, four sixes) before slashing L Balaji;s first ball to the sweeper on the off-side and left a platform for Yuvraj Singh and Mahela Jayawardens to try and pinch the game.

Needing 103 to win off 8.5 overs, the fourth-wicket pair ravaged seven fours and three sixes in its stand of 90 and looked to be on its way to securing the win for Kings XI Punjab when Yuvraj Singh slammed Albie Morkel over mid-wicket. The ball flew a whopping 119 metres - by far the longest hit recorded in the tournament.

Yuvraj Singh had just made a statement -- he was not going to let Chennai Super Kings get away with a facile victory. Kings XI Punjab needed 44 off 24 balls. Sudeep Tyagi, who bowled brilliantly with the new ball, and L Balaji had two overs each. And Kings XI Punjab appeared to be in the driving seat.

It was at this moment that Dhoni turned to Raina. He bowled each of his 12 deliveries in the 15th and 17th overs with a simple plan: not to offer the destructive Kings XI batsmen the length or the width. He kept the ball short of length and was smart enough to not let it bounce high enough for the batsmen to get their willows under the ball and launch it in orbit beyond the boundary.

Dhoni's decision was a masterstroke. Captain Cool, his mind a bundle of emotions including anger and disappointment, had calmly pulled out a trump card to which Kings XI Punjab had no answer. Chennai Super Kings climbed to the top of the table with 11 points while Kings XI Punjab are caught in a traffic jam in sixth place with eight points.

Royal records a Clinical win

Rajasthan Royals moved to the top of the table with a convincing seven-wicket win over Bangalore Royal Challengers, who looked out of depth as they were bowled out for 105 - the tournament's second lowest total - and conceded the win inside 15 overs. Naman Ojha scored his second consecutive half-century in the brief chase but the win was set up by Amit Singh and Ravindra Jadeja, who took seven Bangalore wickets to ensure a low target for their side.

The difference lay in how the two sets of bowlers exploited the bounce offered by the Centurion pitch; Bangalore's couldn't, Rajasthan's did to perfection. Bangalore used the short ball only after the strategy break, by which time the required run-rate was down to below five an over.

Shane Warne won a good toss and chose to field on a new pitch that had received rain overnight. Unlike in the last few games where he opened with spin from one end, he chose to give his fast bowlers a chance to exploit the conditions. Like the spinners, though, the fast bowlers gave favourable returns in their first spells. Batsmen found it difficult to counter the bounce when they tried to cut or pull though poor shot selection accounted for two of the first three wickets.

Amit struck first in the third over: Wasim Jaffer, who had been dropped by Amit in the previous over, drove a fuller delivery away from his body and popped a catch to cover. Jacques Kallis, after flicking a six off his pads from Munaf Patel, stepped out to a shorter delivery and top-edged a pull to Niraj Patel, who took the catch running from deep backward square leg to deep midwicket. Soon after, Rahul Dravid chased a Lee Carseldine delivery going down leg and gloved a catch behind for a duck.

Spin came into the picture in the eighth over when Warne brought himself on, and the steady fall of wickets continued. Robin Uthappa, Bangalore's top scorer with 17, survived a leg-before appeal in that over but fell off the first ball of the next, trapped plumb in front by Jadeja. Bangalore were reeling at 40 for four, which could have been five had Ojha collected a chance from Virat Kohli. The strategy break did them no good, Mark Boucher falling five balls after the re-start; he tried to cut an arm ball pitched full and just outside off from Jadeja, got cramped for room and was bowled for six.

Jadeja got Kohli next, outside-edging one that was pitched short and wide and Morkel holding on to a low diving catch behind point. The fast bowlers then returned to wrap up the innings as the last four wickets fell for 20 runs.

Bangalore bowled too many wide deliveries for a side defending such a low total and picked up their first two wickets as Rajasthan looked to wrap up the game quickly. Graeme Smith, after driving two fours each off Praveen Kumar and Dillon du Preez, stepped out to Jacques Kallis and was bowled after swinging and missing at a length delivery. Carseldine was given out after a mix-up with Naman Ojha saw the two batsmen at the bowler's end. Ojha made up for the dismissal with a massive six off Roelof van der Merwe in the next over Rajasthan went into the strategy break needing 44 with eight wickets in hand.

After the break Yusuf Pathan, Rajasthan's go-to batsman, and Ojha resisted the temptation to score off the short ball till du Preez returned to the attack. Pathan drove Kallis through cover for four and Ojha hit Vinay Kumar for a six over long-off. But Pathan fell, with Rajasthan needing only 15 more, when he tried to pull du Preez for a second time to fine leg and got a top edge instead. However, Rajasthan needed just two and a half an over by then and Ojha hit two fours and a six to wrap it up in the next over.

Sharma's Hattrick does the trick for Deccan

Mumbai Indians squandered a crucial opportunity to grab a spot in the top four, losing to Deccan Chargers by 19 runs in a see-saw game where they had held the cards for the most part. An unlikely hat-trick by Rohit Sharma, who benefited from some immature shot-selection and accounted for the fall of the threatening JP Duminy, followed up on a pivotal double-strike by RP Singh to remove the explosive pair of Sachin Tendulkar and Sanath Jayasuriya to shut Mumbai out of the game, and consolidate Deccan's position to second place.

The turning point came in the 15th over, after Duminy and Dwayne Bravo had helped get Mumbai's run-chase back on track. A rush of blood at the wrong time resulted in Bravo skying a flighted delivery from Tirumalasetti Suman to long-on, and some injudicious batting by Abhishek Nayar and Harbhajan Singh, who were both bowled by Rohit off successive deliveries, left Duminy with too much to achieve.

Mumbai were dented at the start. A disdainful slice over point, a trademark of Jayasuriya's, in the very first over off Ryan Harris bode ominously for Deccan, but the bowler had his revenge the next over, flinging himself to his right at third man to snap a thick edge from the same batsman. RP's impressive run in the IPL this season won him a place in the Indian squad for the World Twenty20, and as a sign of justification, he castled Tendulkar the next ball with an inswinger.

Pinal Shah was Mumbai's Naman Ojha, and though he displayed little signs of being gifted with sound technique, his enterprising 29, laced with a series of innovative shots, the best of which was a reverse-sweep off Harmeet Singh, relieved the pressure after a shock beginning. Duminy's presence was critical, and he immediately showed signs of intent, picking on anything loose and ensuring the required run-rate was kept within reach by combining his flourish with the natural dabs, nudges and clips that have come to typify his batting.

Shah's dismissal, an inopportune swipe to wide long-on, did little to unsettle Duminy, who picked up pace after the tactical timeout, dispatching Harmeet for two boundaries, one through cover and the other to third man, before pulling Harris wide of deep square leg. With 49 needed off six overs and seven wickets remaining, Mumbai held the edge but three quick wickets gifted by Bravo's mindless loft, Nayar's ill-judged paddle and Harbhajan's atrocious slog swung the match firmly in Deccan's favour. Rohit hammered the final nail in the coffin, having Duminy caught-behind off an attempted sweep on the first ball of the 18th over to complete his hat-trick and seal Mumbai's fate.

Mumbai's batsmen undid a disciplined bowling display by their pace attack, which boasted new inclusions in Dhawal Kulkarni and Rohan Raje, who impressed in their respective spells. Failure up the order had proved pivotal in Deccan Charger's stark turnaround after emerging frontrunners in the tournament with four consecutive wins, and had them in trouble again as their team struggled to a competitive score on a sluggish pitch.

Adam Gilchrist's decision to bat was motivated by a hard, dry surface which he felt would last out the day, but Deccan did have to contend with an out-of-touch Herschelle Gibbs who was sucked in by an away-swinger from Dhawal to edge a catch to slip, and finish with two ducks in three innings. Suman's excellent bowling effort preceded a promising cameo, including two massive sixes off Harbhajan, cut short by Bravo. Gilchrist had ceded the floor to Suman, and threatened to cut loose after his departure with a slog-swept six but failed to curb his frustration with the modest run-rate, swinging across the line to be bowled by an unspectacular, yet accurate Raje.

Rohit was restrained by some tight Mumbai bowling, patching together a laboured innings which only picked up pace when joined by Venugopal Rao, who showed some spunk towards the end with a brisk 28 to take his team to what, in the end, proved an adequate total.

A target of 146 would raise Mumbai's hopes of breaking into the top four but a suicidal rush by their middle order has now made that task significantly tougher, leaving them in seventh place.

Daredevils clinically defeats Knight Riders

Delhi Daredevils reclaimed the top spot in the DLF Indian Premier League table with a clinical nine-wicket demolition of luckless, hapless Kolkata Knight Riders at Kingsmead here on Tuesday.

Delhi Daredevils bowlers, especially leg-spinner Amit Mishra and pacemen Ashish Nehra and Pradeep Sangwan can take credit for stopping Knight Riders from running away to a huge score as seemed possible when Brendon McCullum and Morne van Wyk raised 58 runs in the first seven overs. Knight Riders finished with 154 for three in 20 overs, at least 20 runs short of par.

Mishra came into the attack as early as in the third over - replacing an expensive Dirk Nannes - and managed a superb first spell of three overs in which he conceded 18 overs. He returned to bowl a maiden over to Moses Henriques in the 14th over to effectively apply the brakes on Knight Riders's scoring.

Gautam Gambhir, leading Delhi Daredevils again in Virender Sehwag's absence owing to injury, played the anchoring effort to see his team home in 19 overs. He made 71 not out, sharing partnerships of 60 with David Warner (36) and an unbroken 97 with Tillekeratne Dilshan (42 not out) even as the Knight Riders dropped a few catches yet again.

After Chennai Super Kings took the place at the top of the ladder with a superb win on Monday night, Delhi Daredevils moved back there with 10 points from five wins in seven games. They have played one match fewer than both Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals who both have nine points each from eight games.

Kolkata Knight Riders have been unable to stop the slump that the side went into when losing the game against Rajasthan Royals in Cape Town. They have now lost seven games of the nine and have not been able to add to the three points from a win over Kings XI Punjab and a rained off game with Chennai Super Kings.

Royal mauling for Kings XI

Rajasthan Royals did not look a gift horse in its mouth, making Kings XI Punjab captain Yuvraj Singh regret his decision to field first on winning the toss in the DLF Indian Premier League here on Tuesday. By making the best total in IPL 2009, Rajasthan Royals were able to complete a 78-run victory to take the second place in the league.

Openers Naman Ojha (68, 51 balls five fours, five sixes) and Graeme Smith (77, 44 balls, 12 fours, one six) posted the best stand in the tournament this season - 135 runs - and Ravindra Jadeja (33, 12 balls, five fours, one six) ensured that Rajasthan Royals made 211 for four in 20 overs, the biggest total in 30 matches. Ojha was fabulous with his big, clean strikes allow Smith to find the form that fetched him the man of the match award and frustrated Kings XI Punjab no end. Yuvraj's pace bowling trio of Irfan Pathan, S Sreesanth - coming off an injury - and Purple Cap holder Yusuf Abdulla - all disappointed him by either pitching it up or delivering the ball very short on a batting track.

On the contrary, Rajasthan Royals paceman Amit Singh found the right length to hit the deck and cause grief in the Kings XI ranks when they chased 212 for a win. Seeking quick runs, Kings XI Punjab were reduced to two for two in the first over when Sunny Sohal and Karan Goel fell to Amit Singh.

When Simon Katich, Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene fell before eight overs were complete, it was all over bar the shouting. Yuvraj Singh hit a few lusty blows but Kings XI Punjab had left themselves with an unsurmountable peak to scale. The little known Amit Singh, 27, finished with figures of three for nine in his four overs and could count himself unlucky not to have been given the man of the match award.

With nine points from eight games Rajasthan Royals rose to the second place in the table behind Chennai Super Kings. Kings XI Punjab, second at the start of the game, slipped to sixth place in the league, wondering what they need to do to get back in the top half.