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After an indifferent start to their campaign in the third edition of the Indian Premier League, the Rajasthan Royals have finally started displaying the passion, enthusiasm, teamwork and spirit that helped them win IPL-1. For the second match in a row, the Royals turned in an all-round performance, which helped the team leapfrog from last to fifth in the points table with two wins from five matches.

Put into bat by Kings XI Punjab Captain Kumara Sangakkara in an away game at Mohali last night, the Royals scored 183/5 in their allotted 20 overs as their batsmen finally clicked as a unit. Naman Ojha and Michael Lumb got the Royals off to a breezy start, before the former was dismissed by Sreesanth. Ojha, who shot into the limelight with consistent performances in IPL-2, is yet to repeat that form in the ongoing edition.

The Royals, however, would have been delighted and relieved to see Lumb at last living up to his reputation of being a dangerous Twenty20 player in English county cricket. Lumb, who had scores of 10 and 0 in his first two matches for the Royals, played some delightful shots in his 30-balls knock of 41 with seven hits to the fence. While Lumb seemed to be at ease against the medium-pace bowling of Sreesanth and Shalabh Srivastava, he was foxed by a Piyush Chawla googly to be brilliantly stumped by Sangakkara.

Yusuf Pathan hit a massive six en route to his 28 (19 balls), but this wasn’t one of his fluent knocks and yet again he looked to be all at sea against short-pitched bowling early in his innings. Yusuf also failed to make younger brother Irfan pay for dropping a sitter, when he had only scored 7 runs.

The impetus to the Royals’ innings was provided by Man-of-the-Match Adam Voges as the Australian batsman and Faiz Fazal added 60 runs in 37 balls for the 4th wicket, with the Aussie doing the bulk of the scoring. Voges had identified the areas he wanted to score in and found the gaps with ease hitting five boundaries and a six to remain unbeaten on 45 (24 balls). Fazal (45) continued his good form from the previous match against KKR. He started and ended his innings in an attacking manner, but focussed on rotating the strike in the middle of his knock.

A good start to the Royals’ innings and the fact that they held on to wickets while keeping the scoreboard ticking throughout the 20 overs, meant RR scored 53/1 in the first six overs and 50/2 in the last five overs of their innings.

KXIP needed a good start to their run chase, but in the first two overs, the Royals’ new ball pair of Munaf Patel and Shaun Tait conceded only 11 runs. However, some audacious hitting from Sangakkara and Manvinder Bisla saw KXIP score 76 runs in the first six overs. Munaf conceded 40 runs in his first spell of three overs, while Tait was hit for 15 runs in the 4th over and Royals’ skipper Shane Warne’s first over (6th of the KXIP innings) cost his team 17 runs. Sangakkara (29 in 13 balls) was dismissed by Tait in the last ball of the fourth over, but Bisla then went on the rampage.

Warne got the important wicket of Bisla, who looked to be taking KXIP to victory with plenty to spare, with a smart piece of bowling which forced the batsman to hole out to Lumb at deep midwicket in the eighth over with KXIP’s score was at 85/2. Bisla made 35 runs in 18 balls with four hits to the fence and two massive ones over it. The Royals still weren’t out of the woods even after getting Bisla as KXIP still had Yuvraj Singh, Mahela Jaywawardene and Irfan Pathan waiting in the dugout. Yuvraj hasn’t been at his best in IPL-3, but when Lumb dropped a sitter at deep square in the fourth ball of the 11th over of the KXIP innings bowled by Siddarth Trivedi, it appeared it would be the southpaw’s day. However, this didn’t cost the Royals as Yuvi was well-caught by Faiz at long-on in the last ball of the same over as Trivedi used the slower ball to good effect to reduce KXIP to 107/3 after 11 overs.

A combination of excellent captaincy by Warne, smart bowling changes and terrific bowling then led to a continuous fall of wickets as KXIP were bowled out for 152 in 19.1 overs to give the Royals a victory margin of 31 runs. Trivedi (4-0-25-2) was the pick of the bowlers, with Yusuf chipping in with the wickets of Kaif and Chawla. Except for the second over of his spell, Tait was finally at his hostile best and finished with figures of 3-22.

The Royals refused to give up even when Bisla was going hammer and tongs and showed great character by staging a remarkable fight back as they stuck to the basics and backed each other. Things are starting to look up for the Royals, but they need to keep up the intensity and the new ball bowlers have to start containing the flow of runs early on, starting with their next match against defending IPL champions Deccan Chargers on Friday (March 26).