This morning saw the first of the knockout matches in the WBBL, between Sydney Thunder and Hobart Hurricanes, at the former’s home ground, the Drummoyne Oval, six kilometres or thereabouts west of Sydney city centre. This post looks at what happened today and how the KOs work in this tournament.
HOW THE KNOCKOUTS WORK IN THE WBBL
Four teams out of eight qualify for the knockout stages of the WBBL, and the system then works thus: third place take on fourth in what is termed the Knockout match, with third place having home advantage. The winners of this match then play away against the team who finished second, in what is called the Eliminator match, and finally the winners of that face up to the winners of the league stage at the latter’s home ground. In this edition of the tournament Melbourne Renegades and Brisbane Heat had 14 points each from their 10 group games, with the Renegades ahead on net run rate, while Sydney Thunder had 13, the single point coming from a washed out local derby against the Sydney Sixers, and Hobart Hurricanes had 10 points – five wins and five losses. They qualified with this modest tally through a combination of the top three all having such excellent records and the fact that having four teams in an eight team league qualify for knockout stages is over-generous (though less bad than the men’s equivalent where FIVE of the eight sides qualify, which means that there is a genuine chance of a team with an overall losing record making the KOs, which is plumb crazy).
TODAY’S MATCH
Hobart Hurricanes won the toss and chose to bat first. They did not perform well. When Heather Graham was out to the last ball of the 10th over they were languishing at 47-4 halfway through their innings. They did pick things up in the second half of their innings, with Elyse Villani ending unbeaten on 49 from 42 balls, Suzie Bates managing 17 off 17 balls, and Kathryn Bryce with 10 off 6 and Lauren Smith with 6 not out off three balls giving things a late boost. A total of 126 still looked inadequate.
For a long time however, it looked as though Hurricanes might be defending it successfully. With three overs to go Thunder needed 26 to win, and although Litchfield was batting well Anika Learoyd was, as many had on both sides, progressing very slowly. The 18th over, bowled by Heather Graham, which was also the second of the Thunder’s Power Surge, turned the course of the match – 16 runs came from it, including three boundaries, one from Litchfield, and two, off the last two balls of it, from Learoyd. Litchfield then hit the first ball of the 19th over for six. The second and fourth balls yielded singles. The off the fifth ball Litchfield was bowled, which brought Georgia Adams to the crease with two runs needed for the win. Adams cut the only ball she faced for four runs to seal victory for the Thunder with an over to spare and send them on to Allan Border Field on Friday to do battle with Brisbane Heat for the right to face Melbourne Renegades. Litchfield’s 46 off 36 in a match in which few had struck at above 100 and three catches secured her Player of the Match. Molly Strano, one of the most successful bowlers in the WBBL’s history, had figures of 4-0-8-1 for the Hurricanes, unavailing in the end, but the joint most economical figures ever in the knockout stages of a WBBL tournament. A full scorecard of this match canb be seen here.
In many ways justice was done today, although Thunder were not convincing winners by any means. They were much better than the Hurricanes in the group stages, and it is right that the winner of this tournament should come from one of the top three – for Hurricanes to have emerged victorious after qualifying for the knockouts on 10 points would have left a bad taste in the mouth – and yes this is a pom criticizing an Aussie tournament for having overly soft qualification rules, and I stick by every comment I have made along these lines.
PHOTOGRAPHS
I have a very large gallery, due to not having posted on Monday. Monday and yesterday were both sunny although cold, while today has not been sunny and is still cold…
aspiblog 