It had to be this way: from a hopeless position to a last-ball win; from the bottom of the table last year to winners this time around. The second edition of the Indian Premier League saw several twists and turns along its 37-day journey in South Africa, but no match swung from one side to the other as Sunday night’s final. And at the end of six weeks, 59 matches, 1316 boundaries and 506 sixes, the Deccan Chargers stood alone at the top.

The Hyderabad franchise won IPL’s second season with a close, six-run victory against Bangalore Royal Challengers — a victory that seemed unlikely until very late in the piece.

Chasing a small 144 for a win, Bangalore started well enough, with Roelof van der Merwe doing the bulk of the scoring with some big hits in the power plays. But the introduction of Pragyan Ojha stemmed run-flow as Manish Pandey and Merwe went in quick succession. Despite that, they were comfortably placed at 69 for three at the 10-over mark

Then Rahul Dravid fell trying to play a cheeky sweep off Harmeet Singh, before Ross Taylor gifted his wicket away to Andrew Symonds. Virat Kohli, Mark Boucher and Praveen Kumar departed in quick succession as Harmeet and Symonds kept things tight.

Harmeet, who had added the wicket of Boucher to his kitty, took a stunning catch in the deep to dismiss Vinay Kumar as the equation came down to 15 off the last over with one wicket in hand.

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