It was a 'Veteran's Night Out' at Sawai Man Singh Stadium as 38-year-old Brad Hodge and 41-year-old Pravin Tambe engineered a comfortable 30-run victory for Rajasthan Royals against Highveld Lions of South Africa in a group league match of the CLT20 here today.
Royals thus kept their unbeaten record at home intact with 10th straight win (eight wins in IPL).
While Hodge's 23-ball-46 helped Royals reach a comfortable 183 for five in 20 overs, leg-spinner Tambe had his moment under the sun with dream figures of 3-0-15-4 to restrict Lions to 153 for nine in 20 overs.
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Tambe cleaned up Hardus Viljoen (24) and rival captain Alviro Peterson (40) with fastish deliveries, he mixed it up cleverly getting Jean Symes with one flighted outside off-stump and Sohail Tanvir with a fullish deivery that found plumb in-front.
For someone, who just had one wicket from three T20 matches (all played during last IPL), Tambe was on spot from the word go. Not a big turner, the gritty Mumbaikar did find his spot and kept hitting it with a slight hint of leg-break.
By the end of his spell, the shouts of "Pravin Pravin" by the Royals supporters was a fitting tribute to the man whose best days in Mumbai club cricket clashed with that of Sairaj Bahutule, who was Mumbai's first-choice leg-break bowler for a decade.
Just like first match, unheralded Himachal Pradesh seamer Vikramjeet Malik (2/26 in 3 overs) struck early blows with some disciplined bowling as Rajasthan now are on top of Group A with a very bright chance of making it to the semi-finals.