Mumbai, May 7: A 41-run opening partnership between Yogesh Takawale and Sanath Jayasuriya and a 34-run knock by Robin Uthappa helped Mumbai Indians seal their third straight win in their IPL T20 match against the Rajasthan Royals at the DY Patil Stadium here on Wednesday.

The Indians won the match in 15.1 overs, and by seven wickets.

It was a significant win for the Indians as they defeated a spirited side and are still missing the services of their skipper Sachin Tendulkar. Their slow but steady progress in the points table, means there’s lot to come from them once they have Sachin in their ranks.

On the other hand the defeat would have been a setback for the Royals, who had won their last five matches consecutively.

Earlier, steady bowling from the Indians restricted the Royals to just 103, the lowest total in the tournament for Shane Warne’s team. Wickets fell at regular intervals especially after he end of the first 10 overs and in the end, the Royals — leading the league till this game — coupled not even bat out their 20 overs.

The middle-order collapse triggered by Ashish Nehra and Dwayne Bravo undid the Royals, for whom just explosive opener Swapnil Asnodkar (39) and Shane Watson (32) reaching double figures.

The total mirrored the trend of dropping totals as the tournament progresses and even a batsman of Asnodkar’s aggression could not get the ball away as cleanly as he has been doing so far. Watson’s blast against Dhawal Kulkarni that fetched 17 runs was in fact the highest-scoring spell of six balls for the Rajasthan Royals.

After Graeme Smith and Yusuf Pathan had gone early, Asnodkar and Watson 53 for the third wicket, but that was the only significant partnership as the Mumbai bowlers struck regularly and served up a clever mixture of pace and direction that had the Royals’ all sorts of trouble.

Mohammad Kaif was given a life when Jayasuriya dropped a sitter but failed to capitalise, cutting local lad Rohan Raje straight to Nehra at third man. Dangerman Ravindra Jadeja, who had been in tremendous form, fell in the next over to a tremendous catch from Yogesh Takawale off Kulkarni.