IPL 6: Rajasthan Royal beat Hyderabad to enter the final
New Delhi: Brad Hodge on Wednesday single-handedly guided Rajasthan Royals to a four-wicket win over Sunrisers Hyderabad in a thrilling low scoring ‘Eliminator’ of the Pepsi Indian Premier League on Wednesday.
Chasing a target of 133, Hodge hit Darren Sammy for two consecutive sixes to finish the match with four balls to spare and ensure his team’s qualification to the next edition of Champions League T20. Royals will now meet Mumbai Indians in the second qualifier in Kolkata on Friday.
First, he cleaned up Dishant Yagnik (0) with a fuller delivery and then bowled a cutter which breached Stuart Binny’s defence (2). In between the two dismissals, Amit Mishra foxed Ajinkya Rahane (18) to commit early and got a caught and bowled in his favour.
From a comfortable 50 for one, Royals slumped to 57 for five, having lost four wickets with the addition of seven runs in the space of 21 deliveries.
Earlier, Rajasthan Royals bowlers produced a disciplined bowling performance to restrict Sunrisers to 132 for seven.
All the Royals bowlers did a splendid job as Sunrisers batsmen could never really force the pace during the entire span of 20 overs save West Indies skipper Sammy (29, 3×6) striking a few lusty blows during the fag end of the innings.
Shikhar Dhawan (33, 39 balls, 3×4) was the other significant contributor although his innings was an uncharacteristic one by his standards as the slowness of the track didn’t help his cause either.
