Andrew Symonds sparkles

It was Adam Gilchrist who gave a fiery start but with his fall and the subsequent injury to VVS Laxman, it looked Deccan might fall short of a competitive total. This is where Andrew Symonds stepped up to play a responsible hand to push Deccan Chargers to a total that they could defend.

If Gilchrist's was an adrenalin-charged innings, Symonds' was a measured knock. He exploded against Sreesanth to loot 17 runs in the 10th over of the innings - a muscled six over long-on being the highlight. However, he played the spinners with relative caution, often checking his drives, and making sure he didn't throw his wicket away. Never did he allow his ego get better of him and even played Yuvraj, who was the best bowler on view, with respect.

Yuvraj had slipped in a tidy spell that read 4-0-21-2 to peg back Deccan. It was the typical bag of tricks from him - variation in pace and the alteration in trajectory - but it was enough to slow down proceedings on this slow track. In the 11th over, Symonds watched Yuvraj remove Herschelle Gibbs with an arm-ball and saw a slow-off-the-blocks Rohit Sharma run himself out. At this point, things could have gone either way but Symonds stayed put to calmly collect some valuable runs. And considering Irfan's cameo in the chase, those additional runs by Symonds proved the difference between victory and defeat in the end.