Purple Shane gives Bangalore Royal beating

With few marquee names other than Shane Warne in the squad, the Rajasthan Royals were supposed to take up a position in the lower reaches of the IPL table. But in the manner of Villarreal of two seasons ago - but for Juan Roman Riquelme's penalty miss, they would have reached the Champions League final - they have amazed everyone with the quality of their performances. On Saturday, it was the turn of Bangalore's hapless Royal Challengers to come a cropper at their hands, and the 65-run triumph made the Royals the first team into the semi-finals of the competition.

Graeme Smith and the little-known Swapnil Asnodkar have been a revelation at the top of the order, and there was another punishing knock from Shane Watson, surely the tournament's most valuable player so far.

Bangalore's pursuit of 197 was in keeping with their atrocious campaign so far. Rahul Dravid blazed to 75 from just 36 balls, but the others may as well have been invisible. The two T20 specialists, Misbah-ul-Haq and Cameron White, contributed 0 and 10, and Jacques Kallis's return to the side resulted in a painstaking 29-ball 20.

With the team owner, Vijay Mallya, already having taken potshots at the side and his captain publically, in the great tradition established by Tom Hicks, it's tough to predict what greater depths Bangalore can plumb.

Up in Jaipur, they couldn't care less though. After the gloom of the bomb blasts a few days ago, Shane Warne and his men have helped to put a few smiles on faces, with Warne also taking possession of the purple cap for the tournament's leading wicket-taker. The caught-and-bowled dismissal of Zaheer Khan was vintage Warne, and a fine example of the commitment and desire that have taken this unlikely bunch of players to the top of the heap.