Keep your com­pe­ti­tion buried when they are down, say some. Chen­nai Su­per Kings, led by Mo­hit Shar­ma's best IPL fig­ures and Bren­don Mc­Cul­lum's sec­ond half-cen­tu­ry in four match­es, ce­ment­ed their po­si­tion near the top of the ta­ble with a crush­ing vic­to­ry against de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Mum­bai In­di­ans, who are yet to reg­is­ter a win.

SCORES:Chen­nai Su­per Kings 142 for 3 (Mc­Cul­lum 71*) beat Mum­bai In­di­ans 141 for 7 (Ro­hit 50, Mo­hit 4-14) by sev­en wick­ets

Score­card and ball-by-ball de­tails

Su­per Kings had been al­ter­nat­ing be­tween good bowl­ing and good bat­ting per­for­mances in their pre­vi­ous three match­es. In their fourth one though, they were strong with both bat and ball. As Mum­bai In­di­ans eyed a late surge in the last five overs, they lost their set bats­men, Ro­hit Shar­ma and Corey An­der­son, in quick suc­ces­sion, be­fore Mo­hit cleaned up the mid­dle or­der in just one over to end up with fig­ures of 4 for 14.At the break, Mo­hit said it wouldn't be an easy chase for the Su­per Kings bats­men on the slow pitch. The way Dwayne Smith and Mc­Cul­lum played the first two overs sug­gest­ed they had tak­en Mo­hit's ad­vice se­ri­ous­ly; on­ly two runs came. How­ev­er, with the words of their top per­former ho­n­oured, Smith switched to his usu­al modus operan­di, hit­ting three six­es in the next sev­en balls, all straight hits.

Once the chase was set in mo­tion though, it was Mc­Cul­lum who took the front seat, blitz­ing pow­er­ful bound­aries through ex­tra cov­er and mid­wick­et off suc­ces­sive Za­heer Khan de­liv­er­ies. The sight of his fel­low coun­try­man Corey An­der­son seemed to charge him up even more as he used his in­cred­i­ble bat speed to pow­er three bound­aries through the cov­er re­gion.

With 51 runs in the Pow­er­play, Mum­bai In­di­ans' on­ly chance in the match was to some­how dis­man­tle the strong bat­ting or­der. They did get a sniff as Smith and Suresh Raina de­part­ed in suc­ces­sive overs. That was to have no ef­fect on Mc­Cul­lum though, who, apart from giv­ing re­spect to La­sith Ma­lin­ga, kept on pep­per­ing the bound­ary reg­u­lar­ly off oth­er bowlers and brought up his half-cen­tu­ry in 36 balls.Su­per Kings were al­most lev­el with Mum­bai In­di­ans' score at the 15-over stage, but they were in no mood to com­mit the same er­rors and can­tered past the tar­get with an over to spare.Mum­bai In­di­ans had much to thank Ro­hit and An­der­son, who re­vived the in­nings with a mea­sured 84-run stand for the third wick­et af­ter the ear­ly loss of their open­ers. Both bats­men found it tough to push the scor­ing ear­ly on. A six by An­der­son off the last ball of the 10th over sig­nalled some in­tent, but the scor­ing-rate still lin­gered be­low six an over.

Ro­hit picked up the scor­ing from there on though, smack­ing a cou­ple of six­es over the leg side as 51 runs came off the next five overs. But all hopes of a late surge were dashed once Su­per Kings got an open­ing with the dis­missal of An­der­son. Ro­hit, im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter reach­ing his half-cen­tu­ry, was caught in the deep off Ben Hil­fen­haus and Mo­hit, in the 19th over, burst the bal­loon with three wick­ets, all with su­perbly con­trolled slow­er balls. The fi­nal to­tal of 141 was 10 to 15 runs short of what Mum­bai In­di­ans would have eyed at one stage.