Hayden's struggles, Harmeet's legcutters

Third time unlucky: Compared to last year and his orange-cap heroics, Matthew Hayden has had a poor IPL. The old fluency was missing again on Thursday night, but the Deccan Chargers seemed determined to keep him out there, with RP Singh at cover and and Bodipati Sumanth at gully dropping straightforward catches. There was to be no third life though, with Andrew Symonds showing much safer hands at cover.

Neutral crowd, neutered atmosphere: Semi-finals at "neutral" venues don't work, not when fans of both sides have to trek more than a 1000 kilometres to make it. This wonderful and huge stadium which was packed for the Mumbai Indians game was half empty for this one. The fans that were there made themselves heard, but row upon row of vacant seats told their own story.

Big-wicket taker: The slower legbreak that Harmeet Singh bowls isn't even particularly well disguised, but it's done the trick for Deccan on a few occasions. It got rid of Robin Uthappa in a game that Deccan had to win to make the semis, and it accounted for MS Dhoni here, with a wide one being cut to gully. He may not take many wickets, but when he does, they usually count.

A straight red: When Symonds paddle-swept Shadab Jakati to fine leg, both Albie Morkel and R Ashwin chased it down. As the ball sped to the rope, they both slid in, efforts that would have invited a straight red card had they been on a football pitch. They took each other out, and the ball went for four.