NSW triumphed in their opening Airtel Champions League match in Delhi with a comprehensive win over the South African Diamond Eagles.

The match was the starting point for NSW in their group of three, with their second fixture against Sussex in Delhi on Sunday.

When he arrived at the stadium skipper Simon Katich found a wicket totally devoid of grass which looked as though it would lack any true pace.

This was proved correct as the evening went on and the bounce became lower, and boundaries harder to hit.

After winning the toss Katich had no hesitation in deciding to bat in order to post a total that would be hard to chase.

Hughes (1) departed early but a main partnership of 79 between David Warner (23 from 31) and Katich (53 from 41), stabilised the NSW innings. While Warner was content to play second fiddle, Katich was in masterful form and his timing was impeccable as he hit six fours and two sixes in his innings before being caught on the boundary from the bowling of Van Schalkwyk. From here it was a combination of some enormous hitting from Moises Henriques (27 from 19 balls) and sensible accumulating from Ben Rohrer (22no from 15) that got NSW to an above par score of 144 from their 20 overs.

Katich admitted later that having summed up the wicket while batting he thought that this would be a defendable total if NSW bowled to potential.

This they did with Brett Lee continuing his brilliant one-day form to snare Rossouw lbw early before Stuart Clark took over. Having not played a great deal of Twenty20 in recent years, Clark started superbly, having the dangerous van Wyk caught first ball of his spell for a duck and going on to take the bowling honours with 3 for 12 from his four overs. This rightly gave him a cheque for US$ 2500 as the most economical bowler of the match.

He was brilliantly backed up by the rest of the NSW bowling line up as the Eagles' middle order was strangled for runs. Moises Henriques was back to his penetrating best and picked up two wickets in a controlled spell of 3 overs for 13 runs, while Nathan Hauritz continued his Champions Trophy form to record one for 13 from his four overs.

Hauritz must surely be the most improved bowler in world cricket in the past 12 months.

At 6 for 36 from 9 overs the game was pretty much over but with run rates being vital in this competition, NSW were relentless as they held the Eagles to a final score of 9 for 91 from their 20 overs.

Katich was rightly named Man-of-the-Match after following up his innings with two direct hit run outs.

NSW now take on the Sussex Sharks from England at 4pm local time on Sunday.

NSW 6 for 144

EAGLES 9 for 91

NSW won by 53 runs