The game was all about the little-known Manish Pandey, who became the first Indian to score a ton in the IPL. Royal Challengers set the target of 171 runs to win for the Deccan Chargers. Manish Pandey (114) and Roelof van der Merwe (23) were the main contributors for the Royal Challengers to put 170 for 3 on the board in their allotted quota of 20 overs. Pragyan Ojha who took 2 wickets for 32 was the most successful bowler for the Deccan Chargers.

19-year old Manish Pandey made a little room for himself and anything pitched in his zone kept vanishing into the stands. Pandey was an absolutely unknown entity for Deccan’s captain Adam Gilchrist and he just didn’t know how to contain him.

He shuffled his bowlers around, but the Karnataka batsman simply marked his spots and found the gaps with effortless ease. There were a couple of dropped chances, but that doesn’t take anything away from the stupendous effort of the teenager in such a pressure game.

He only got a little quiet when he was past 95, but Pandey made that up brilliantly once he crossed his century. A couple of huge hits followed and as he finished the innings off with an over-boundary, Gilchrist was the first one to come up and congratulate him.

Before this sparkling innings Manish Pandey’s claim to fame was mostly confined to his participation in the victorious Under-19 World Cup campaign in Kuala Lumpur two years back. The Aussie legend, though, got his team off to a whirlwind start, and along with Herschelle Gibbs, they put on 68 runs off 6.5 overs.

Even after Gilchrist (15) got out, Gibbs kept up the chase with some breathtaking batting. When Robin Uthappa dropped Gibbs at long-on, the Hyderabad fans believed it might just be their day, but that was not to be.

Gibbs (60) departed soon after and when Symonds (18) and Rohit Sharma (12) got out a little later, it was all over for the Chargers. After 20 overs Chargers were 12 runs short to Challengers total for loss of 6 wickets.

Royal Challengers were once again well served by the bowling of captain Anil Kumble and B. Akhil who both got two wickets each while giving away very little. Royal Challengers will now take on CSK tomorrow while Deccan Chargers will be up against Team Delhi, the table toppers, today.

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

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