He had blasted an unbeaten 66, bowled three overs for just 16, and come within centimetres of bagging his third IPL hat-trick. Anyone would have thrown Yuvraj Singh the ball when the Delhi Daredevils needed 21 from the last 12 balls. The Pune Warriors skipper himself, however, hesitated a moment, pondering whether to let Wayne Parnell bowl the penultimate over. In the end, after conferring with Robin Uthappa and Jesse Ryder, Yuvraj ambled towards the top of his mark, ball in hand. The start of the over seemed to suggest that nothing could go wrong for him on this humid Sunday evening at the DY Patil stadium. Aaron Finch tried to pummel a typically slow and innocuous delivery from the left-arm spinner into outer space. The ball instead looped off his top edge and fell into the bowler’s cupped hands. Two balls later, Venugopal Rao took strike. It was he who had escaped being the hat-trick victim, not picking the arm ball and getting an inside-edge on to his pads. Since then, he had struck two meaty sixes and added 21 to Delhi’s total. Rao now proceeded to spank the ball into the stands for the third time, stepping out, stepping away and clattering it over long on.
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