New Delhi: Royals, bruised and with a point to prove, lapped up the offering to give themselves another day to live and fight. Brad Hodge led his team to a four-wicket victory at the Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium on Wednesday.

The Sunrisers Hyderabad are an aberration in T20 cricket and a refreshing one at that. Most teams build their line-ups around power-hitters, but Hyderabad have no power-hitter, someone who can keep the crowd busy. They play the game with some subtlety of the longer version and have surprised almost everyone by reaching this far on the back of their enviable bowling line-up.So when they were limited to 131, the palpable feeling was that they could make a match of it.

On a Kotla track, which looked difficult to play on, as against the belter a day back in the MI-CSK match, the Sunrisers bowlers had the hand on the wheel once Shane Watson was dismissed as the second wicket with the team score on 50.Sammy got rid of two of the next three wickets to put the skids on Royals chase.

But then Brad Hodge stepped in slogged and pulled Karan for 18 runs in an over. The balance was again titled in the Royals favour.That the Royals were chasing a low total helped their cause. And credit had to go to skipper Rahul Dravid. 

Dravid had used Ajit Chandila to great effect, even opening the bowling with him.But he had been on the money till spot-fixing revelations consumed him.Now, without Chandila, Dravid fell back to the old T20 theory of using pacemen, even if it meant throwing a bulky Vikramjeet Malik first up.The risk paid dividends as Malik, playing just his second game this season, took the first two wickets to peg the Sunrisers back.They could never recover and with Dravid keeping an all-seam attack, they could not get a hang of it.

Thus  Brad Hodge guided  his team  to a clash on Friday against Mumbai Indians in Qualifier 2 for a place in the final.