Rajasthan Royals began their campaign in the fourth edition of the Indian Premier League with a win against the Deccan Chargers at Hyderabad. Rajasthan won by eight wickets and with more than an over to spare to take two points from the game while the Chargers were left with another loss at the Rajiv Gandhi where they have yet to win a game in three years now.
The Chargers started quite rapidly with the pair of Shikhar Dhawan and Ishank Jaggi going after the bowling from the word go. 20 came off the first two overs of the innings and there were another 20 in the next three overs as the Chargers raced along to 40 in the fifth before Amit Singh sent Dhawan back off a slower ball.
Kumar Sangakkara followed in the next over for a duck off Siddharth Trivedi, who went on to pick up another couple of wickets in his four-over spell, while it was Shane Warne’s four overs in a row that pushed the Chargers back. Only 21 came off his four and that pushed the batsmen into trying to hit Warne but they were deceived by the maestro to allow him a couple of wickets as well.
Jacob Oram had some fitness issues which meant that the Royals had to bowl Ashok Menaria and Stuart Binny for a couple of overs, which went for 22. This helped the Chargers along to 137/8 in the 20 overs, a score which did not look too daunting.
The Royals opened the innings with Rahul Dravid and Amit Paunikar and the innings followed a similar graph in the first few overs to that of the Chargers. Paunikar hit a couple of boundaries in the first over of Pragyan Ojha and followed it up with another two off the next over of Dale Steyn.
Ishant Sharma’s three over-spell brought sanity to the proceedings, as he conceded only 10 runs in the process, also helping Steyn to pick up the wicket of Paunikar.
Shane Warne then displayed his typical penchant to surprise by sending Johan Botha up the order and it proved to be a master-move. Botha took the pressure off the shoulders of Rahul Dravid (28) by propelling the score along to above the six-run per over mark and followed it up with 18 runs off the next two from Ojha.
Dravid’s dismissal – again off the bowling of Steyn – could have taken the game away from the Royals, but Ross Taylor smashed a couple of sixes and finished the game off for the Rajasthan side.
Trivedi was named the man of the match for his superb spell of bowling that got him three wickets in the game.