Pune: Pune Warriors won their first match of IPL Season 6 by beating Rajasthan Royals by seven wickets at Subrata Ray Sahara Stadium here on Thursday. They finally broke their losing streak of 11 matches which started last season and the credit for this victory goes to their new opening pair of Aaron Flinch and Robin Uthappa, who came hard on the RR bowlers and ensured a convincing win for their team.
Earlier, it was the spin twins of Rahul Sharma and Yuvraj Singh who did the damage to the batting line-up of Rajasthan Royals and restricted them to a total of 145.
Chasing down the target of 146, Robin Uthappa and Aaron Flinch smoked up the bowling attack of Rajasthan Royals as they started taking the aerial route from the very first over of the match. They smashed Harmeet Singh and S Sreesanth for 17 and 21 runs in the third and fourth over of the innings and crossed the 50 run-mark. This explosive start was enough to knock out Royals out of the match. Robin Uthappa departed in the fifth over after scoring a blistering 32 off 16 balls.
Meanwhile, Flinch continued hitting the bowlers all over the park and took his team to a comfortable position. Flinch reached his 50 in the 11th over but Ross Taylor looked rusty at the other end and and got out to debutant Harmeet Singh. Yuvraj who came into bat in 11th over and though he looked a bit uncomfortable initially, he too came in to the party and smashed two fours and two sixes to seal the maiden victory for Pune Warriors.
James Faulkner picked up the wickets of both the openers and ended up with an impressive figures of 2/17 in four overs.
Earlier in the match, Rajasthan Royals were off to a shaky start when they lost the wicket of Kushal Perera in the very first ball of the match and that wicket brought Rahul Dravid to the crease to accompany Ajinkya Rahane. Dravid and Rahane batted beautifully and applied themselves to keep the scoreboard ticking. They added 81 runs stand for second wicket before Rahane departed after scoring 30 off 27 balls. Though Dravid held one end, he was running out of partners as his team kept losing wickets at regular intervals which restricted them from scoring big score. Dravid departed after scoring a magnificent 54 runs off 48 balls which was scripted with eight boundaries. Later Brad Hodge and James Faulkner scored 22 and 19 runs to take Rajasthan Royals to a decent total of 145.
By ISN