Lee wins Aussie battle

End game

It was the return of Australians Brett Lee and Andrew Symonds to the Punjab and Hyderabad teams respectively that had dominated the build-up to the first clash between the two teams in IPL2. And though Symonds did manage to power Deccan Chargers to a challenging 168,it was Lee who walked away as the days hero,helping his team overhaul the target with one ball to spare in a nail-biting finish.

With Punjab requiring 19 runs from the last two overs with three wickets standing,Lee smashed Ryan Harriss fourth ball for a six to bring it down to eight from the final over. Piyush Chawla pulled RP Singh for a boundary to fine-leg off the first delivery to seal the deal for Punjab,before Lee hit the winning runs.

Symonds surge

Earlier in the day,Lee kicked off proceedings by going past Adam Gilchrists outside-edge a couple of times in his first over. But the Hyderabad captain provided yet another flying start to his team with a 16-ball 20,before being dismissed by Sreesanth,whose celebration was subdued this time around.

The Hyderabad innings fell away in the middle overs as Herschelle Gibbs,Tirumalsetti Suman and Rohit Sharma perished while trying to increase the run rate. Symonds started off slowly,and it was only in the 16th over that the Deccan innings really got going again,as the Queenslander cut loose.

Symonds hit Irfan Pathan for 13 runs in the over,before taking Sreesanth for 20 runs in the next. Venugopal Rao proved to be an able foil for Symonds,the duo putting on a 95-run stand,68 of which came in the last five overs.

Symonds finished with an unbeaten 36-ball 60,while Rao was run out off the last ball after a 25-ball 32.

Mahela keeps his cool

Sunny Sohal got Punjab off to a decent start with a 17-ball 30,but hat-trick hero Rohit Sharma brought Hyderabad back into the match again. He dismissed openers Sohal and Simon Katich in the same over,and when Shoaib Ahmed got rid of both Kumar Sangakkara and Yuvraj Singh in the 10th over, Punjab seemed to be sliding towards defeat.

But Mahela Jayawardene had other ideas and kept his team in the hunt with a 28-ball 43,before Lee and Chawla kept their nerve in the end.