IE 7 does not show the table header - THEAD on AJAX call

I would have spent more than an hour breaking my head with IE. 

Problem : I have a table which is fetched using AJAX. Now this table has a thead with header contents and rendered fine in all the browsers except IE. 

My code looked something like this 
<table>
<thead>
<th>Name</th>
<th>Age</th>
</thead>
<tbody>

Solution :  There should be a TR within the THEAD. Now the header started showing fine after the ajax call. The funny thing is - IE rendered it fine when this table was part of the page. When I moved it to be rendered from an AJAXy call this problem surfaced. 

Now the code looks like this.
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Name</th>
<th>Age</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>