Pushed to the wall, Sunrisers Hyderabad produced a clinical performance to beat Royal Challengers Bangalore by five wickets and stay alive in the Indian Premier League playoff race, in Sharjah on Saturday.
SRH first produced a brilliant bowling effort to restrict a batting-heavy RCB to a modest 120 for seven and then chased down the target in 14.1 overs to zoom to fourth spot in the standings from seventh.
SRH now have 12 points from 13 games and need to win their last league game against table-toppers Mumbai Indians to stay in the hunt.
RCB, who needed a win to seal their playoffs berth, slumped to their third consecutive defeat in the tournament but stayed at second place in the table with 14 points from 13 games.
The 121-run target was always going to be a walk in the park for SRH in a small ground like Sharjah unless RCB inflicted early damage which they failed to do.
RCB removed SRH skipper David Warner (8) early but they needed more wickets upfront to be in the contest.
After Warner's dismissal, Wriddhiman Saha and Manish Pandey (26 off 19) shared 50 runs for the second wicket in quick time to take control of the chase.
But some brilliant spin bowling from Yuzvendra Chahal in the middle overs and over cautious batting from SRH gave RCB outside hope.
Chahal dismissed Pandey and Saha and then Kane Williamson (8) was sent back by Isuru Udana to give RCB a ray of hope even though the contest was tilted very much in favour of SRH.
Jason Holder played a 10-ball 26-run cameo towards the end to take SRH home comfortably.
Earlier, SRH strangled RCB by picking up wickets at regular intervals after opting to bowl. RCB were done in by some incisive bowling from SRH bowlers upfront, resulting in lack of partnerships, which is the vital for any team to post a decent total on the board.
RCB's struggle with the bat can be gauged from the fact that they hit only nine boundaries and a six in their entire innings despite having the likes of Padikkal, Kohli, De Villers and Chris Morris up their ranks.
Holder shone with the ball, too, with figures of 2 for 27 from his four overs.
