ABU DHABI – West In­dies Twen­ty20 World Cup re­serve Ja­son Hold­er put in an­oth­er neat all-round per­for­mance, and Sun­ris­ers Hy­der­abad held their nerve to beat Roy­al Chal­lengers Ban­ga­lore (RCB) by four runs in the In­di­an Pre­mier League (IPL) on Wednes­day.

Hold­er made 16 off 13 balls and Sun­ris­ers post­ed 141 for sev­en from 20 overs.

The 6ft, 4 in tall all-rounder re­turned to bowl a tidy spell of 1-27 from his four overs, as Sun­ris­ers kept things tight with the ball in the clos­ing stage, and need­ing 13 from the fi­nal over at the Za­yed Crick­et Sta­di­um, RCB fell short of the tar­get.

Sun­ris­ers are al­ready guar­an­teed to fin­ish the sea­son at the bot­tom of the stand­ings, but the de­feat was a blow to RCB.

They re­main third in the ta­ble and are now un­like­ly to over­take sec­ond-placed Chen­nai Su­per Kings be­cause of an in­fe­ri­or net run rate.

The top four teams af­ter the round-robin pre­lim­i­nary stage will qual­i­fy for the play­offs and a top-two fin­ish gives teams two op­por­tu­ni­ties to qual­i­fy for the fi­nal on Oc­to­ber 15.

RCB cap­tain Vi­rat Kohli got the match go­ing with a crisp four through the off-side, but Bhu­vnesh­war Ku­mar trapped him lbw for five in the first over.

Sid­darth Kaul claimed Dan Chris­t­ian caught at mid-off for one in the fourth over and RCB end­ed the pow­er­play 37 for two.

Speed­ster Um­ran Ma­lik, 21, play­ing on­ly his sec­ond IPL match, bowled with gen­uine pace and got his maid­en IPL wick­et of KS Bharat caught be­hind for 12 in the sev­enth over and RCB were in trou­ble on 38 for three.

In the ninth over, Ma­lik reached a speed of 153 kilo­me­tres an hour (95 miles an hour) – the fastest de­liv­ery of this year’s com­pe­ti­tion, but Aus­tralian Glenn Maxwell joined De­v­dutt Padikkal and they added 54 for the fourth wick­et.

Maxwell an­nounced his ar­rival in style with a six off the sec­ond ball he faced, and then took on Rashid Khan in the 10th over, hit­ting the leg-spin­ner for a four and a six as RCB reached 67 for three at the halfway stage.

Maxwell con­tin­ued mer­ri­ly and Padikkal bat­ted with cau­tion and car­ried RCB close to the 100 mark.

A di­rect hit from Sun­ris­ers and New Zealand cap­tain Kane Williamson ran out Maxwell for 40 and end­ed the re­sis­tance in the 15th over.

Afghanistan leg-spin­ner Rashid Khan got Padikkal caught at deep mid-wick­et for 41 in the 17th over, as

Sun­ris­ers man­aged to stay in the hunt and Ku­mar con­ced­ed on­ly eight from the fi­nal over to give them the win.

Ear­li­er, Eng­land bats­man Ja­son Roy hit 44 off 38 balls and Williamson added 31 from 29 balls to lead the Sun­ris­ers’ bat­ting.

Har­shal Pa­tel took 3-33 for RCB, mov­ing to third in the list of most wick­ets of 29 in a sin­gle IPL sea­son.

Har­shal bowled Williamson with a de­light­ful off-cut­ter and took the wick­ets of Hold­er and Wrid­dhi­man Sa­ha for 10 down the stretch.

West In­dies all-rounder Dwayne Bra­vo – with 32 wick­ets for CSK eight years ago – holds the IPL sin­gle sea­son record for wick­ets.

With one pre­lim­i­nary match re­main­ing and RCB through to the play-offs, Har­shal can break Bra­vo’s record.

CMC