Chennai take Hyderabad's No. 2 spot

Chennai Superstars displaced the Hyderabad Heroes from their No. 2 spot in the league by handing them their first defeat of the tournament. Led by Ian Harvey's aggressive 49, Chennai set a target of 161 after which their bowlers kept Hyderabad down to 142 for 9 to complete an 18-run victory.

At one stage it seemed like Chennai would reach a total in excess of 160 given the blistering start by Harvey. He got going by hitting Abdul Razzaq for three of the first ball of the innings and, in the second over, smashed Syed Sahabuddin over long on for the innings' first six. There was a brief delay because of a floodlight failure but the break did not interrupt Chennai's momentum. Harvey laid into Stuart Binny's over, lofting him for two sixes over midwicket and long off. He then made the bowler pay dearly for overstepping twice, carting the two free-hits over the long-on and cow-corner boundaries. Chennai took 29 runs off the over and had reached 70 by the end of five.

In a desperate attempt to curb the run-glut, Chris Harris brought on the spinner Inder Shekar Reddy in the sixth over and the ploy worked. Harvey was fooled by a slower one and got a leading edge which was caught by Harris at extra cover. Harvey was gone for 49 off 21 balls and his opening partner G Vignesh soon followed, caught by the wicketkeeper off Nicky Boje.

The innings lost steam after that with wickets falling at regular intervals. Harris brought himself on in the 13th over and trapped R Sathish lbw with his second ball. He also bowled Hemanth Kumar and had R Jesuraj caught to finish with figures of 3 for 18 off four overs. Chennai had lost 10 wickets for 90 runs in 13.5 overs.

Hyderabad were facing an asking-rate of eight and over but their run-chase got off to a disastrous start. Abdul Razzaq was caught in the second over off Jesuraj but the knock-out blow came in the next over when Jimmy Maher was caught by Harvey at short extra cover while trying to drive, and Ambati Rayudu was run out off a no-ball a couple of deliveries later. Hyderabad never recovered and had lost six wickets before passing 100. Boje was their top-scorer but his 38 took 49 balls as Hyderabad fell irrecoverably behind the required run-rate.