Jaipur, India – Johan Botha put in an impressive all-round performance to guide Rajasthan Royals to a crushing seven-wicket win over Mumbai Indians in an Indian Premier League (IPL) match on Friday.
The South African off-spinner finished with 3-6 off two overs to help Rajasthan restrict Mumbai to their lowest IPL total of 94-8
and then scored 45 to shape his team's victory with 11 balls to spare.
It was Rajasthan's fourth win in eight matches and Mumbai's second defeat in seven games of the Twenty20 tournament. Mumbai still lead the league table with 10 points, followed by Rajasthan with nine points.
Australian opener Shane Watson was the other notable contributor for Rajasthan with 26.
Botha struck with his third delivery when he trapped West Indies batsman Kieron Pollard lbw before accounting for Australian Andrew Symonds and Rajagopal Sathish in his next over.
Symonds top-scored with 17 in Mumbai's dismal batting show. There were just two sixes and four boundaries in the entire Mumbai innings.
Mumbai's Harbhajan Singh, who took a short first run and returned for a second in a bid to keep the strike in the final over, hit a last-ball six off seamer Watson.
Rajasthan owed their victory to spinners, with Shane Warne and Ashok Menaria also playing crucial roles in restricting Mumbai.
Former Australian leg-spinner Warne conceded just 13 runs off four overs and left-arm spinner Menaria 20 runs, sharing three wickets in the process.
Menaria, who opened the attack, bagged two of the first three wickets, including that of skipper Sachin Tendulkar, to send Mumbai reeling at 46-3 in the opening nine overs.
He had Tendulkar stumped for seven runs and then held a return catch to dismiss Ambati Rayudu (11) before Warne put more pressure on Mumbai when he had Rohit Sharma (13) caught by Botha at long-off.
Brief scores:
Mumbai Indians 94-8 in 20 overs (A. Symonds 17; J. Botha 3-6, A. Singh 2-14, A. Menaria 2-20) lost to Rajasthan Royals 95-3 in 18.1
overs (J. Botha 45, S. Watson 26; M. Patel 2-18) by seven wickets. – Sapa-AFP