Aclt20 day-3 results 1.CAPE COBRAS VS OTAGO 2.DECCAN CHARGERS VS SOMERSET

Cape Cobras 193 for 4 (Puttick 104*, Ontong 39*, Duminy 32) beat Otago 139 (Nathan McCullum 38, Kleinveldt 3-24) by 54 runs
Scorecard and ball-by-ball details
How they were out

	Justin Ontong's late fireworks took Cobras to a match-winning total

The crowd at the Rajiv Gandhi Stadium did not have a home team to support in the first part of the Saturday double-header but those who bothered to show up certainly got their money's worth, thanks to a wonderful display of power hitting by the Champions League's first centurion, Andrew Puttick, and later by Justin Ontong. After upstaging Royal Challengers Bangalore, the Cape Cobras booked themselves into the second round with a solid performance in the field to back their batsmen, who piled on 193. Otago barely dominated any passage of play during their chase and fell 54 short of the mark.

Both teams went into the game with seven international players each. Otago looked the more formidable, but only on paper. As is turned out, Otago were caught woefully short on the batting department. The fortunes of both teams after 10.1 overs told the story - the Cobras were at 79 for 2; Otago made the same number of runs but lost, crucially, three more wickets. Save for a brief cameo from Nathan McCullum, a Cobras victory was inevitable.

Perhaps the best formula to draw in the crowds to support teams with plenty of unknowns is to prepare a road of a pitch and allow the batsmen the license to whack. It was a pity in the context of the game that Otago failed to match that total, but Puttick certainly made it a game to remember, not just for himself. Punters would have placed bets on one of the national stars to notch up a century but Puttick grabbed the headlines instead.

He relied more on power rather than timing to fetch his boundaries. He set the tone by slashing Neil Wagner past slip and flicking the same bowler off his pads in the opening over of the match. With the ball coming on to the bat, the pair of Puttick and JP Duminy willfully chipped down the track to unsettle the lengths of the seamers. Length deliveries were punched down the ground and Nathan McCullum's was smothered and slogged, even as he tried to vary his length and flight.

It didn't take long for the Cobras to realise that hitting through the line was the order of the day. As the innings wore on, the Cobras brought out their paddle scoops and stylish flicks to toy with the inexperienced Otago attack. Otago could learn a thing or two from the England international Dimitri Mascarenhas, who managed a wicket-maiden and changed his pace cleverly to another, that of Herschelle Gibbs.

It was just a matter of seeing off Mascarenhas before launching into the rest. Puttick favoured the wide long-on boundary for his big hits. Nathan, Craig Cumming and Ian Butler looked back only to see the ball sail over the ropes. A four down to deep midwicket brought up his fifty but little did Otago know that his job was only half done at that point.

Puttick was particularly harsh on Butler, smacking 32 off 14 balls and then taking Neil Wagner for 27 off 16. Considering that they were the quickest of the lot, it was easy for Puttick to use the pace and launch the ball to all parts. When Puttick swooped Butler over midwicket, the smile on his face indicated just how much he enjoyed batting in the middle, possibly in the form of his life. It was a fortunate twist of fate since he wasn't included in the original squad and came in after Graeme Smith's pull-out. He was beaming again when he squeezed out a full delivery by Wagner to bring up a boundary to third man, and his century.

After Duminy and Rory Kleinveldt holed out trying to clear the boundary, Ontong came out to biff four sixes in his 39 that entertained the crowd. Otago leaked 121 runs off the last ten overs - a stat which decided which way the match was headed.

Otago invested probably two of their best local batsmen right at the top to get them off to a flier. Brendon McCullum and Aaron Redmond made an encouraging start with some power hitting through the off side but the joy was short-lived. Redmond fell slashing to third man and Brendon perished for 21, failing to make his ground while attempting a second run. Two further run-outs before the tenth over dented them further.

Nathan McCullum gave Cobras a minor scare when he picked Ontong for three consecutive boundaries. However, he got a little too cheeky against Kleinveldt when a paddle scoop went straight to short fine leg. Kleinveldt picked up three wickets as Otago threw their bats around at everything and folded up with 17 balls to spare.

The mismatch notwithstanding, Puttick's performance was more than just an appetiser for the second game, between the home side Deccan Chargers and Somerset.

Somerset 157 for 9 (Thomas 30*, Hildreth 25) beat Deccan Chargers 153 (Laxman 46) by one wicket
Scorecard and ball-by-ball details
How they were out

	Alfonso Thomas played a leading role in Somerset's last-ball win

"I can't believe I have done that," said an ecstatic Alfonso Thomas, who hit two boundaries in the last three deliveries of a thriller to steal and seal victory for Somerset. In a rollercoaster of a match, Somerset just about managed to hold their nerves courtesy a 50-run partnership for the eighth wicket between Thomas and James Hildreth to get past the line off the last ball of the match. The equation came down to five runs from three balls with one wicket left when Thomas sliced a full toss from Scott Styris - who had taken two wickets in the final over - to the deep point boundary before bringing up the win with another carve over point.

It was a strange but extremely interesting chase, and one that seemed to derail at various points as wickets fell at regular intervals. Crucially, Somerset managed to find the odd big hit that always kept them in the hunt. Rain intervened for a while, forcing the captains to regularly check the Duckworth-Lewis equation, and the drama increased when Fidel Edwards was prevented from completing his last two overs after he slipped in two beamers.

When the seventh wicket fell, Somerset still needed 55 from 37 balls but Thomas and Hildrith biffed a few boundaries against the spinners, who had done so well till then to get Deccan ahead, to get the equation down to 31 from 24. Deccan attacked with their seamers and Hildrith and Thomas started dealing in singles to slowly push Somerset ahead. The equation came down to nine from 10 balls after Thomas paddle-swept RP Singh over the short fine-leg fielder. When a yorker ran for three leg byes it seemed the game was over but there was one final twist left in this enthralling game.

With five needed from the last over, Styris bowled Hildreth first ball and then removed Max Waller off the third, but crucially for Somerset, Thomas had crossed over. And he finished the game in style.

Somerset did well in the end to get past the line but one sensed a bit of nerves in their approach to the chase especially after the raucous home crowd got into the game. Marcus Trescothick, playing his first game out of England in a while, fell after offering a fleeting glimpse of his talent with two crunchy upper cuts but some of the shots that followed his exit were almost needless: Zander de Bruyn attempted a thrash over covers and edged behind, Craig Kieswetter holed out to long-on, Peter Trego swung to deep midwicket, and even Justin Langer swatted a full delivery from well outside off to mid-on.

Not that they could have done it in singles but the run rate was never so daunting that they had to go for desperate hits. Once the top order fell, the bottom half swung their bat but lost wickets regularly till Thomas and Hildreth chose to stamp their presence in the game. The platform was laid earlier by their bowlers, with Thomas playing his part with an economical spell. VVS Laxman starred for Deccan with an uncharacteristic knock but they lost the plot in the middle and needed Venugopal Rao to push them just past 150.

You don't use adjectives like hammer and clobber to describe shots from Laxman but tonight he almost batted with a touch of violence. He charged down the track to the seamers, cleared the front foot and heaved across the line, moved outside leg and flat-batted length deliveries back past the startled bowlers and even tried an ugly hoick across the line.

That last shot captured his mood perfectly: Laxman edged a hoick to the fine-leg boundary and sported a lovely sheepish smile. It was exactly the sentiment that many of the viewers would have felt while watching this uncharacteristic innings. We might never know whether it was merely Laxman adjusting his game to this format after his county stint or whether it was about proving a point for being stripped of his IPL captaincy and dropped from many games in the last IPL. Whatever the intent was, it suited Deccan tonight as they got off to a racy start, but they were let down by the other batsmen.

Adam Gilchrist unfurled a few big hits but top-edged a pull shot and Andrew Symonds holed out to long-on. Laxman too slowed down a touch before he fell, going for yet another heave across the line and the scoring almost came to a pause as Trego starred with his economical medium pace and de Bruyn too did his bit to apply the squeeze.

Deccan crawled from 86 for 3 in 10 overs to 99 for 4 from 15 overs as Rohit Sharma and Styris tried to rebuild the innings all over again but both fell in quick succession and Deccan was restricted to a below-par score on a batting surface. None of the IPL teams have won a game so far in the Champions League Twenty20 and Somerset made sure the script didn't change tonight.