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Rajasthan Clinch Convincing Win

Rajasthan Royals rode on brisk cameos by Adam Voges (45 not out), Faiz Fazal (45) and Michel Lumb (41) to post 183 for five. Chasing 184 for victory, Punjab were all out for 152 with six balls remaining.

Shaun Tait bagged three wickets while Siddarth Trivedi and Yusuf Pathan picked up two wickets each.

The Royals were off to a rollicking start and looked steady in the middle overs as well but they did not get the late flourish as the 200-mark eluded them.

Put into bat on a track which seemed to have something early for the pacers, Rajasthan Royals got off to a flying start in the match billed as the ‘basement battle’ involving two teams languishing at the bottom of the IPL points table.

Lumb was straightaway in the thick of things as he smote two fours of Irfan Pathan’s first over and his opening partner Naman Ojha (13) meted out the same treatment to comeback man S Sreesanth, who was drafted in at offie Ramesh Powar’s expense.

Boundaries came thick and fast and the score cruised to 35 when Ojha’s stay was cut short in the fourth over and the batsman received an animated send-off from bowler Sreesanth.

An unperturbed Lumb hit Shalabh Srivastava for back-to-back boundaries and was inching close to his fifty when a smart piece of stumping by Kumar Sangakkara, off Piyush Chawla’s only second delivery, cut short the Johannesburg-born Englishman’s 30-ball knock that had seven crisp fours in it.

Next man in Yusuf Pathan has done precious little after that 37-ball century against Mumbai Indians in his team’s IPL III opener and if his score went beyond seven today, he owes it to his brother Irfan.

Irfan came running from long-off to pouch Yusuf’s miscued skier off Srivastava but eventually grassed it to give a life to his brother. Yusuf prospered to hit a brisk 19-ball 28 before Srivastava eventually had him, caught by Yuvraj Singh in the deep. In Fazal’s (45 off 38) reassuring company, Voges kept the scoreboard ticking with his smart yet risk-free cricket. — PTI