The chase, like most things to do with Hyderabad in the IPL, hadn’t gone according to plan, but somehow the Deccan Chargers had got down to the business end of the match with a shot at victory. Just like Delhi’s last game at the Kotla, against Chennai, it came down to 15 runs off the last over. And just like that game, Sehwag had to turn to a spinner to bowl the last six nervous deliveries. But while Pakistan captain Shoaib Malik failed miserably, Amit Mishra delivered in style.

At the Ferozeshah Kotla on Thursday night, India’s forgotten leg-spinning hope picked up the second hat-trick in the IPL, the 12-run win getting his team’s campaign back on track. Off the first ball of the 20th over, Ravi Teja fell, caught at the long-off boundary. Next ball, Pragyan Ojha skied one to Dilshan, before RP Singh obliged, stumped following a desperate heave.

This will probably go down as one of the great mysteries of this tournament: How can a batting line-up that reads Adam Gilchrist, Shahid Afridi and Herschelle Gibbs — with Rohit Sharma shoring up the middle-order along with Scott Styris — be languishing at seventh spot in the table? It’s been repeatedly pointed out that one big knock or one massive spell can win a game, but this galaxy of champions has now lost eight out of 10 games.

They started off well too — Afridi and Gibbs looked in the mood to finish things off in a hurry. Mishra started the slide by getting them both in consecutive overs. As it turned out, he came back to kill off their defiance as well. Mishra, who was tipped to one day replace Anil Kumble in the Indian line-up, had returned from obscurity with figures of 4-0-17-5. He had also, once again, managed to overshadow the most overshadowed man in Indian cricket.

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