The Rajastan Royals held on to their nerves in a tight encounter, that went on till the penultimate ball of the match and emerged victorious by just 2 runs in a edge-of-the-seat thriller. This victory, propelled them to the 4th position in the points table with 4 matches still to go.and leaves them in a very hopeful position to make the semis.
Last night, they won the toss and elected to bat on a perfect batting track. Though they didn't exactly have a dream start to their innings, Shane Watson came to their rescue yet again, scoring a valuable 58 off 36 balls. Faiz Fazal too chipped in with an important 36 off 29 balls. There were no other significant contributions from any other batsman, as a result, they were bundled out for 159 in 19.5 overs.
This was not going to be too tough a chase for the Deccans, but they too had a lone warrior in Rohit Sharma, apart from a cameo at the top from Gilchrist (34). Still, at one stage, it looked like the Deccans are cruising to victory, when they were 5 for 137 in 17 overs. This was the time when the spin wizard Warne came to the party, claiming 4 wickets, which reduced Deccans to a point, where their only hope was Rohit Sharma.
Rohit to his credit, did his best to bridge the gap between the balls remaining and runs to be scored, and managed to bring it to a stage where just 6 runs were needed from the last over. At this juncture, Warne tossed the ball to Siddharth Trivedi, who bowled an excellent last over under pressure, claiming RP Singh, running out Harmeet Singh and then forcing Rohit Sharma to go for a lofted drive, which was gobbled up at sweeper cover by Abhishek Raut to mark the end of the Deccan Innings.
Rajastan Royals won this match by 2 runs and are looking determined for an even better show in their remaining encounters.
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