Big opening stand propels Royals to fourth

An opening stand of 98 from 71 balls between Rahul Dravid and Ajinkya Rahane laid the platform for Rajasthan Royals to defeat Pune Warriors by five wickets on Sunday.

An opening stand of 98 from 71 balls between Rahul Dravid and Ajinkya Rahane laid the platform for Rajasthan Royals to defeat Pune Warriors by five wickets on Sunday. The win took Rajasthan to fourth place on 14 points. Punes defeat,meanwhile,was their seventh in a row.

Dravid made a 40-ball 58 and Rahane a 48-ball 67,as Rajasthan raced along in pursuit of their 179-run target. Both openers reached fifty with a six. Pune hit back with the wicket of Dravid and a couple of quiet overs,leaving Rajasthan requiring 73 from 42 balls,but Rahane and Shane Watson took 21 off the 14th over,bowled by Angelo Mathews,to get back on track. Wayne Parnell pulled things back again,bowling Watson off his inside edge and conceding just one run off the 15th over,leaving Rajasthan needing 51 off the last five.

Before this match,Punes average economy rate in the last five overs was 10.98. But they had left out Ashok Dinda,who had twice bowled four-over spells costing more than 50 runs. And this seemed to have made some impact,as Bhuvneshwar Kumar struck in the 16th over to dismiss Rahane,leaving the equation reading 43 from 24 with two new batsmen at the crease.

Binny finishes job

Newness at the crease,however,didnt affect Stuart Bonny. He slapped the first ball he faced,from leg spinner Rahul Sharma,to the off side boundary,and then muscled him over deep midwicket for six later in the over. In the 19th over,he struck Bhuvneshwar sweetly over long on for another six.

Needing five off the last over,Rajasthan lost Sanju Samson,but Bonny kept his head,piercing the gap between midwicket and mid on to score the winning boundary off the penultimate ball of the innings.

Earlier,Robin Uthappa and Aaron Finch put on 97 for the first wicket to help Pune score 178 for four. Uthappa scored 54 off 41 balls and Finch made a 32-ball 45. After Finchs dismissal,Yuvraj Singh came in and scored 15 off 11 balls,before hitting Siddharth Trivedi straight to deep midwicket.

Yuvrajs dismissal seemed to bring Pune to a standstill,with Shane Watson bowling five successive dot balls to new man Mitchell Marsh,who only managed a single off the last ball of that over. In the next over,Uthappa was out going for a non-existent single after Marsh inside-edged one onto his pads. Marsh shrugged off that inauspicious start,though,and combined with Mathews in a 41-run fourth wicket partnership,before finishing off the innings with a six over long on off James Faulkner.

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brief scores: Pune Warriors 178/4 in 20 overs R Uthappa 54,A Finch 45,M Marsh 35; S Trivedi 1/33 lost to Rajasthan Royals 182/5 in 19.5 overs A Rahane 67,R Dravid 58,S Bonny 32; W Parnell 3/27 by five wickets.