Hurricane Taylor spearheads Royal win

Pune lost Ryder out to Botha and are 27/1 !

Manish Pandey and Robin Uthappa are at the crease now.

Uthappa was dismissed by Warne for 35 and now Pune are 77/2, with Pandey on an unbeaten 23.

Earlier Rajastan won the toss and inserted Pune into bat !

Pandey falls for 30 off 31 balls and Yuvraj was run out by Trivedi for 7 and Pune are tottering at 103/4 off 15.1 overs!

The batsmen who came later like H Singh, N McCullum and Manhas could not impress much and Pune finished at 143/7.

Ross Taylor was 44 not out when the Royals reached 144/4. A royal win !

An unconquered 47 by Taylor saw the Royals home. He batted royally for 47 in an edge of the seat thriller !

He was helped by Lady Fortune, when he was dropped at 31. Four boundaries and two sixes flowed off his bat and with Rahane he put of 52 runs for the unseparated fifth wicket!

At one stage, it looked as if Pune will beat the LLLLL streak , with the asking rate rising to 11 by the 16th over but Rahane and Taylor showed the necessary sang froid and presence of mind with a match winning fifth wicket partnership.

Royals have gone to the top of the IPL Table with eleven points from nine matches, ahead of KKR and MI.

Rahul Sharma was the pick of the Pune bowlers, as he took 3/13.

144 runs to win and Royals started disastrously, losing Dravid and Watson with only 40 on the board. Had Manish Pandey held on to a catch in the first over, the story would have been different. Watson survived but could not stay long, as Thomas found his outside edge. Dravid struggled as usual and was dropeed by Harpreet in the sixth over. Again his miserable luck continued as he was caught and bowled by Rahul Sharma. (We have said in our columns that he is running a bad time astrologically, the period of the negative 8th and 3rd lord, Venus ) Botha was out when the score was 59/3, Maneria hit 3 sixes in his 29, but the asking rate went to more than 10 by the end of the 15th over.

Then Ross Taylor took over. He committed mayhem on the bowlers, reminiscent of the great century he smashed off the hapless Pakis in the World Cup. He survived a chance when Nathan McCullum dropped him when he was on 31. Taylor smashed Karthik in the 16th over with two fours and a six and the asking dropped to 9 per over.

In the last two overs, Rajastan needed 19 runs and Taylor hit a huge six in the last but one to take the game away from Pune. Young Rahane hit the winning run and Rajastan coasted to their third win on the trot.