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The Rajasthan Royals piled on the misery on the Chennai Super Kings with a convincing 17-run win helped first by a cracking 80 from opener Naman Ojha and later some fine bowling and fielding from Yusuf Pathan. Chennai never looked in control of the chase having lost wickets regularly and though Murali Vijay played a sparkling innings; his resistance was not enough to get his team out of the rut they find themselves in.

Shane Warne elected to bat first after winning the toss in the hot afternoon conditions at Ahmedabad in a ploy to put pressure on the struggling Chennai bowling in the heat. In a clash of two teams carrying opposite momentums into the game, Rajasthan came on the back of three victories while Chennai on the back of an equal number of defeats. The Royals named an unchanged squad while Dhoni brought in the young Arun Karthik while Thissara Perera made way for his Lankan counterpart Thilan Thushara.

Rajasthan's turnaround in the competition has been mainly due to the resurgence of its foreign players and Michael Lumb carried on from where he had left off in the last game. Especially harsh on anything on the leg-stump, Lumb went after both Morkel and Thushara and one of his swung boundaries off Muralitharan gave testimony to the kind of touch he is in. He hit two sixes off Morkel; the second one a whipped flick over square-leg but Morkel got his man the very next ball; as Lumb (30 from 16) was done in by a slower one.

Naman Ojha, meanwhile, looked in good nick and kept the momentum going, taking on the seamers and the spinners in contrasting styles. He looked more comfortable against the seamers, playing confidently on the offside while the spinners were dealt with cautiously and the bad deliveries hit in the long-on area. Most of his runs came against Joginder Sharma's medium pace though he also managed to hit sixes off Muralitharan and Raina. He brought up his maiden fifty of the season with a single, and when Faiz Fazal fell for 17 (18b); Rajasthan were sitting pretty at 100/2 off 11 overs.

Shadab Jakati got rid of Fazal but his more important contribution came in the 13th over when he got the dangerman Yusuf to hole out to short cover. Bamboozled by the turn, Yusuf fell cheaply and hopes of a repeat of the blitzkrieg innings against Deccan were dashed. At 129/3 off 15 overs, the Royals had lost some of their momentum, and though they picked up 48 from the last 5 overs, Rajasthan would believe that they could easily have scored another 15-20 more.

Ojha thumped the impressive Jakati for two huge sixes to bring up the 150 but fell soon after for 80 (49 b), trying to go over short-fine leg, Thushara getting the wicket. Voges (20 from 19b) followed suit the next over, as Murali hung on to a miscued effort. Paras Dogra started the final over with a boundary but the next three balls saw three wickets go down, two of them run-outs as Rajasthan lost the plot losing out on some crucial runs in the process.

Warney started the Royals' defence with Yusuf Pathan and the bowler did well by giving away only 4 runs in his first over. Hayden counter-attacked immediately, crashing Sumit Narwal for a six off his first ball but couldn't follow it up, as a couple of good overs by Narwal and Shaun Tait put the pressure on Chennai. Pathan came back for the fourth over, and got rid of the big man as the ball scooped up after hitting the bottom of the ball with the bowler completing an acrobatic low catch.

At 26/1 off 4 overs and with Hayden gone, Chennai desperately needed some inspiration and Murali Vijay was the man to provide it. Five lovely shots off Narwal; two of them sixes in the long-on region gave the innings some much needed impetus and a 24-run over brought up the Chennai 50 in five overs. That onslaught not only brought Chennai right back into the game, but with Vijay looking in great touch it was upto the middle-order to play around him.

Suresh Raina though, looked a little out of sorts and despite beginning with a boundary off Tait and later being dropped twice, he could not do much. Raina's brief struggle ended with a slower delivery from Warne which pitched outside off-stump and spun in to take of. Just before Raina's dismissal, Murali Vijay (42) was run-out going for a non-existent single in what was a crucial jolt to the chase. The two wickets pegged back the run-rate substantially as Dhoni and Badrinath took their time to adjust on the slow track.

The batsmen chose Narwal - a clear weak link in the Royals attack - to go after and his third over yielded 14 runs to leave Chennai with 59 required of the last five. Yusuf Pathan came back in the next to finish off his spell and it was once again his over which produced some action for the Royals. Crossing each other for the second run, the batsmen collided resulting in Dhoni losing his bat and then his wicket as he was run out by a mile. A furious Dhoni (21) walked off knowing well that his side were on its way to another morale-sapping defeat.

Albie Morkel (28) tried to make a match of it for a while; tearing into Warne with three huge sixes; two of them over mid-wicket but Tait got him with a bouncer off the next over to snuff out the last remaining hope of a Chennai escape.

The win, Rajasthan's fourth consecutive, firmly roots them to the top half of the table and with Shane Watson yet to join this well-oiled unit Warne might well have a shot at his second IPL title. Their credentials are put to the test at Delhi next, as they head north to round-off the month. Chennai is travelling in the opposite direction, and with this loss has joined Kings XI Punjab as one of the strugglers of the IPL. It is hard to envision Dhoni at the helm of a struggling side though, and it remains to be seen how much time the Indian skipper takes to bring his team back into the reckoning. Chennai too plays on the 31st, with the Royal Challengers Bangalore the visitors in Chennai.

Mini Scorecard:

Rajasthan Royals: 177/8 (20 overs, 8.85 rpo)
Ojha 80                   Jakati 2/30
Lumb 30                  Thushara 2/28

Chennai Super Kings: 160/6 (20 overs, 8.00 rpo)
Vijay 42                    Pathan 1/26
Morkel 28                 Tait 2/22

Also Read: Delhi Daredevils vs. Kolkata Knight Riders Match Preview

File Photograph Copyright: Michael Henn

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