Rohit Sharma shines in Mumbai's win over Pune

Rohit Sharma's unbeaten 62 helped Mumbai register their third win in four games as they beat Pune by 41 runs at the Wankhede Stadium on Saturday.

Batting first, the hosts were off to a strong start with Sachin Tendulkar finally coming good with 44 off 29, which included four consecutive boundaries off Ashok Dinda. Ricky Ponting, though, continued to struggle and fell for 14 off 17.

Tendulkar followed soon after with the score on 60. His dismissal brought Mumbai's in form pair of Dinesh Karthik and Sharma together. They rebuilt the innings with a 55-run stand, but Karthik fell just when the two looked set for the final flourish.

Rohit, just 15 off 16 then, was ready to strike and Kieron Pollard was the perfect foil. He changed his gears in the 17th over bowled by Dinda. Rohit smacked a gentle length ball over long off, and the flood gates opened. The next one was a slower no-ball, and it sailed over long-on. In the next over, Marsh got the treatment: a four and a six from Pollard, followed by a four and a six from Rohit.

Angelo Mathews bowled a fine 19th over giving away just nine runs, but handed the ball to Dinda for the 20th, and Rohit feasted with yet another brace of sixes. The first of those brought up his fifty; in all he looted 47 off the last 15 balls he played.

"It was important for me to get going today as in the first couple of games I didn't do well. So I wanted to get runs and I'm happy I did it," Sharma said.

"Dinesh was hitting it better than me (early on) so my role was to give him as much strike as possible. I knew if I stayed till the end I would increase the run rate and I wanted to keep it simple and go for balls which were in my area"

It took a late onslaught from Ravindra Jadeja, who scored 38 runs from 20 balls, for Chennai to stun Bangalore by four wickets in a last-ball thriller on Saturday.

Chennai stumbled early while chasing the Bangalore total of 165 as Ravi Rampaul and R Vinay Kumar removed the openers to reduce them to 10 for 2 in four overs.

Suresh Raina and S Badrinath rebuilt but when they fell Chennai still needed 88 off 46. Dhoni and Jadeja kept them in the chase by hitting the odd boundary. With 29 required off the last two overs, Rampaul seemed to have sealed the deal with the wickets of Dhoni (33 off 23) and Bravo (8 off 3) in the 19th over.

Kohli backed RP Singh to bowl the last over and it backfired, with RP bowling two length balls at the start of the over. Jadeja edged the first over short third man, but smashed the next one over long-on.

The pressure was squarely on Royal Challengers and it showed when Kohli misfielded the fourth ball at long-on allowing the second, which made it two required off the last ball.

Surreal scenes followed as Jadeja hit RP's bouncer straight to Kohli at third man. But Kohli's celebrations were short-lived as he realised RP had overstepped.

"In Twenty20 you don't have much time to think," Jadeja said. "In the last over we needed 16, so we decided to hit the ball that was within our reach. (Dwayne) Bravo, (Chris) Morris and I backed ourselves and we won it."

Jadeja attributed the team's success to a good balance in the ranks. "We have good allrounders. We also bat till number nine and have two genuine fast bowlers which give us an advantage in the first six overs."