IPL 20-20 Cricket

VVS Laxman's loss didn't seem to have done Hyderabad any harm. They won the previous game against Chennai, and against Jaipur, they clearly had the upper hand, before throwing the game away, and perhaps their chances of making the semi-finals with their nine-wicket loss at the Sawai Man Singh stadium here on Friday.

Needing virtually a win from every game, Hyderabad, with only two in their bag, went to fortress Jaipur — they are the only ones to have not lost a single game at home — and started off in fine fashion before Jaipur's duo of Shane Warne and Yusuf Pathan, who were Hyderabad's nemesis in a remarkable run chase in the first leg, made short work of their opponents to go top of the IPL points table.

Warne crippled Hyderabad with a fantastic spell of 2-19 to keep them down to 140-8 — after being 74-1 in 10 overs — before Yusuf Pathan made it one-way traffic with a belligerent 37-ball 68 as Jaipur got home with four overs to spare.

Yusuf, back opening in the innings, put on 109 with Graeme Smith (40) as Hyderabad ran out of ideas to contain either, finally getting Yusuf in the 13th over, while RP Singh, Hyderabad's best bowler on the night, was rewarded with Smith's wicket with Jaipur just eight runs adrift from their target.

Sohail Tanvir didn't quite have the outing he was hoping for after his six-wicket haul here, but it was the trickery of the masterful Warne and yet another impressive performance from Siddharth Trivedi (1-8), the medium-pacer, that caught Hyderabad off guard, who let slip a fantastic start.

After being put in to bat, Adam Gilchrist belted his second successive half-century while captaining his side as he and Herschelle Gibbs blazed away to their best start of the tournament, reaching their 50 in the sixth over, before the talismanic Shane Warne yet again inspired his side to stage a remarkable turnaround.