Hyderabad cling on for three-run victory

There's a fine line between timing a chase to perfection and leaving the surge too late and Ahmedabad Rockets will feel they did the latter. Ahmedabad fell short by three runs against Hyderabad Heroes despite having seven batsmen waiting in the dugout. Chasing a target of 167, Ahmedabad scored 92 off their last seven overs, including 23 off the final over, but finished with 163.

Ahmedabad had a steady start to their chase. Murray Goodwin and Ryan Campbell did not score at break-neck speed but they ensured wickets didn't fall early. Campbell did most of the scoring during the partnership of 54, finishing with 33 off 27, while Goodwin ticked along at well under a run-a-ball. It wasn't until the 14th over that Goodwin got a move on and pushed the run-rate over six for the first time.

Goodwin cut loose by pulling Nicky Boje over long-on for six and followed up with a cut to the point boundary. He hit a hat-trick of sixes off Inder Shekar Reddy: charging to lift the first over midwicket, pulling the next over square leg, before hammering the third once again towards the stands at midwicket. At the end of the 16th over, Ahmedabad needed 54 off 24 balls with Goodwin and their captain Damien Martyn at the crease and nine wickets in hand. In the next over, the game turned.

Martyn hit Harris flat and hard and watched as the ball flew towards the long-on boundary. Ambati Rayudu sprinted to his left, covered a lot of ground and flung himself full-length to hold the catch with two hands. He was given the Man-of-the-Match award for that effort. Two balls later Goodwin charged Harris and missed, leaving Ibrahim Khaleel with an easy stumping. Ahmedabad now had 52 runs to get off 18 balls with two brand new batsmen at the crease.

Reetinder Sodhi helped bring the equation down to 27 off the final over and then hit Syed Sahabuddin to the leg-side boundary for a six and four off the first two balls. Feeling the pressure Sahabuddin bowled a wide but managed to concede only six runs off his next three, although he did miss two run-outs, leaving Ahmedabad with an impossible 10 to get off the final delivery. Sodhi clouted the final ball over the long-off boundary.

Hyderabad also had a sluggish start to their innings, scoring only 35 runs off the first seven overs but that was because Jason Gillespie and Rakesh Patel dismissed the top-four batsmen for single-digit scores.

Boje and Stuart Binny revived the innings with a 59-run stand for the fifth wicket and Harris forged another invaluable stand after Binny fell for 48 off 32 balls. Boje scored 47 off 30 deliveries and Harris injected energy into the finish with 37 off 18 as Hyderabad scored 106 off their last ten overs to reach 163.