Tag: Chris Jordan

Renegades Blown Away by Hurricanes

A look back at todays BBL game between Melbourne Renegades and Hobart Hurricanes and a photo gallery.

This morning UK time saw Melbourne Renegades entertain Hobart Hurricanes at Geelong. This post looks back at the match.

THE RENEGADES INNINGS

The match started strangely, with Josh Brown allowing Chris Jordan to bowl a maiden in the first over of the match. Maidens are rare birds in T20s, and I cannot recall a previous example of a match in this format starting with such an over. Tim Seifert got a single early in the second over, but off the fourth ball thereof Brown fell to a catch by Nikhil Chaudhary off Riley Meredith for an eight ball duck, an absurd innings in a T20. The third and fourth overs, bowled by Nathan Ellis and then Meredith bowling his second were taken for 17 runs each, and a Power Play score of 36-1 looked respectable. However, Hurricanes immediately tightened things up. In the ninth over Jordan bowled Seifert for 34 to make it 63-2. With the penultimate ball of the 10th over English leg spinner Rehan Ahmed bowled Mohammad Rizwan for 32, which brought about the mid-innings drinks break at 69-3. Two overs later Jake Fraser-McGurk and Ollie Peake were still together, and there was an obvious case for activating the Power Surge. However Renegades did the cowardly thing and held back in the hope of getting a better opportunity. Five balls into the 13th over Peake was well caught by Matthew Wade off Nathan Ellis to make it 86-4, and a chance to use the Surge with two batters who have both already faced a few balls had been squandered. Three balls into the 14th over and Hurricanes other leg spinner, Bangladeshi Rishad Hossain, bowled Fraser-McGurk to make it 88-5. Hassan Khan and Will Sutherland revived things for Renegades, and they eventually activated the Surge for overs 17 and 18. The first of these overs was beneficial to their cause, but the second, bowled by Jordan, was ruinous. Hassan Khan was out to the first ball of it, and Sutherland to the fourth, to make it 126-7. Jordan conceded one more run in the over, but still at that point had 3-9 from three overs. The last ball of the 19th over saw Gurinder Sandhu fall to a catch by Hossain off Ellis to make it 133-8. The final over was Jordan’s fourth and last as well, and with the second ball of it he accounted for Fergus O’Neill to make it 135-9. Jordan did not manage to complete his five-for, and ten runs accrued from the last four balls of the innings. However, 145-9 still looked a hopelessly inadequate score, and 4-1-19-4 was still an excellent set of bowling figures. Jordan has played over 400 T20s in his long career, and has never yet taken a five-for, though todays figures were not quite a career best – he has recorded 4-6 in the past. Rishad Hossain had 1-21 from his four overs and Rehan Ahmed 1-25 from his. If Stokes is still worried about Bashir’s lack of skill with the bat (see here) then perhaps Ahmed, a genuinely front line bowler could come into the side. It would be far from the first time that an English player in Australia not as part of a tour party has been drafted in in an emergency – George Gunn, in Australia for health reasons, was called in to the 1907-8 touring party and proceeded to top score in both innings on test debut, while in the 1990s Gus Fraser, omitted by Illingworth, was clever enough to arrange to be in Australia playing grade cricket, and soon found himself back in the side.

THE HURRICANES CHASE

Mitchell Owen fell to the first ball of the chase, caught behind by Rizwan off Jason Behrendorff. However Nikhil Chaudhary, recently demoted from opening to number three, then hit the second, third and fourth balls of that opening over for fours and Hurricanes were on their way, and never really looked back. The other opener, Tim Ward, was also dismissed in the Power Play, for 8, but Hurricanes already had 38 on the board by then. It was the third wicket stand between Chaudhury and Ben McDermott that killed the game stone dead. At the halfway mark Hurricanes were 95-2, with these two still together, and activating the Power Surge at the earliest possible opportunity was a blatantly obvious thing to do, and Hurricanes duly did so. Although they lost Chaudhury to the last ball of the Surge, caught by Fraser-McGurk off Sandhu for 79 (38) the two overs had also yielded 36 runs (18 each), and a mere 15 were needed for victory by then. It took 1.5 overs to knock those runs off, with no further wickets falling. McDermott ended on 49 not out (33). Hurricanes had won by seven wickets with 6.1 overs to spare and went top of the table. Jordan was named Player of the Match for his great bowling. Scorecard here.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off…

Brisbane Heat v Hobart Hurricanes

An account of a thrilling BBL encounter between Brisbane Heat and Hobart Hurricanes, plus a photo gallery.

At 8:15 this morning UK time the Big Bash League encounter between Brisbane Heat and Hobart Hurricanes got underway. This post looks back at the match.

THE BRISBANE HEAT INNINGS

Hobart Hurricanes won the bat flip and put Brisbane Heat into bat. Josh Brown and Colin Munro opened the batting for Heat, while Riley Meredith took the new ball for Hobart Hurricanes. A very fine over was marred by the last delivery, which was hit for four to make Heat 6-0. Corey Anderson bowled the second over, and it was a poor one – he bowled two wides, and conceded nine runs in total, four of them off the eighth delivery, necessitated by the bowling of the wides. Nathan Ellis, the Hurricanes captain, and veteran medium pacer Chris Jordan bowled the fourth over of the opening Power Play. Both bowled well, especially Jordan, and Heat were 22-0 after four overs. The fifth over, bowled by left arm wrist spinner Patrick Dooley, should have produced the first wicket but Tim David dropped an absolute sitter. Hurricanes continued to ring the changes, with the sixth over being bowled by a sixth different bowler, Nikhil Chaudhary. This over yielded eight runs including a four, but also a wicket of the sixth ball, Josh Brown, caught by Macallister Wright to make it 35-1. The seventh over finally saw someone bowl a second over, Riley Meredith. This over yielded a mere four runs and Heat were 39-1. Chaudhary bowled the eighth over, and it seemed to have ignited the Heat innings, Munro taking 20 from it, including two sixes and a four, 59-1. Dooley bowled the ninth over, and after five excellent deliveries he conceded a four off the last ball of it to make it 67-1. Ellis bowled the tenth over, conceding seven runs, but also trapping Heat’s number three, McSweeney, LBW. Heat were 74-2 at the halfway stage of their innings. Heat messed up the second half of their innings. They were overcautious about the Power Surge, and lost Munro for a well made half century before they got round to taking it. They then panicked and took it with two new batters together at the crease and made an utter hash of it, scoring 8-1 from those two overs. That left them at 112-5 from 17 overs. The last three overs were bowled by Jordan, Ellis, and then Jordan, and although Paul Walter made a brave effort to increase the total the two experienced bowlers restricted the damage from this last three overs to 20 runs, while two wickets fell. Ellis had 2-23 from his four overs, Jordan 3-19 from his four, and the most economical of all had been Meredith, conceding just 15 from his four.

THE HOBART HURRICANES INNINGS

With such a poor total to defend Heat needed early wickets to have any chance of success, and they got them, Michael Neser claiming one in the first over, and then Xavier Bartlett striking three times in quick succession to account for Wright, Sam Hain and Anderson. Hurricanes ended their four overs of Power Play reeling at 25-4. After 4.4 overs, two balls short of constituting a match, rain came down and the players left the field. The interruption was not a massive one, but enough to reduce the length of the Hurricanes innings to 16 overs, their target to 118 and their Power Surge from two overs to one. Hurricanes fought hard, with Chaudhary and David batting well. They like Heat were guilty of overcaution about the Power Surge, but fortune favoured them, and Chaudhary and David were still together when they finally took it. They may have mistimed taking it, but once they did take it they made decent use of their Power Surge, taking 12 runs off it. This left them needing 20 off the last two overs. In the next over David was dismissed, but Chaudhary did manage to get on strike for the start of the final over, with 13 needed to win. Paul Walter, the tall left arm medium pacer from Essex, bowled this over. Chaudhary hit the first ball for six to bring up a fine fifty, and when he added two more off the second ball the target was down to five off four balls. However, just when it seemed like he was set to be the matchwinner for his side Chaudhary then edged the next delivery through to Billings, and it was five needed off three balls with only tailenders left. Singles came off the next two deliveries, and Hurricanes needed three off one ball to win. They managed only one, with Dooley being run out going for a second. This meant that Heat had hung on to win by one run on the DLS method. Xavier Bartlett, whose three early wickets had given Heat the chance to defend a very modest total, was named Player of the Match, quite correctly in my view. Full scorecard here.

BRIEF FURTHER THOUGHTS

Neither side distinguished themselves when it came to the use of the Power Surge – Heat had two got opportunities to take it with Munro at the crease and going well and neglected both, allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good, and ending up having to use those overs without Munro to exploit them, while Hurricanes left it at least one, possibly two overs longer than they should to claim theirs, and were rather fortunate after delaying like that to still have both Chaudhary and David at the crease to use it. Hurricanes dropped two easy chances in the field, and Chaudhary panicked just when it seemed that he was winning them the match. Heat finding a way to defend such a low total illustrated why they are ensconced at the top of the table.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off…

Two Wins For England Cricket Teams

Brief accounts of two T20 internationals that took place within twelve hours and ended in England wins.

INTRODUCTION

Twice in less than twelve hours England cricket teams have won matches both of which could easily have been lost. This post covers both games, the first briefly, the second in rather more detail.

WINNING AFTER A DREADFUL START

In the West Indies the England men’s team made a dreadful start to their last match of the tour, being 32-4 at one point. Then Joe Root and Sam Billings had a good partnership, Root using all his experience to reach 50 off just 37 balls, while Billings reached the landmark of two balls fewer before then really opening out in the last few overs in the company of David Willey to finish unbeaten on 87 as England reached an improbable 182-6. 

I decided that there was no way the West Indies were chasing that total down, and with the women due in action early in the morning my time went to bed. The West Indies had evidently been even more shattered by England’s recovery than I expected as was to find out that their response had been to crumple to 45 all out and defeat by 137 runs, Chris Jordan collecting extraordinary bowling figures of 4-6.

Full scorecard here.

A TIGHT FINISH IN GUWAHATI

With their series already won, the England women rested Kathryn Brunt for the last match, with a view to their upcoming tour of Sri Lanka. A bright start from Beaumont and Wyatt was frittered away as 51-0 became 93-6, but some good batting at the end by Sophia Dunkley, Brunt’s replacement, and Anya Shrubsole at least gave England 120 to defend. Poonam Yadav, the slowest spinner in international cricket, was her usual mean self, Anuja Patil took 2-13 from her four overs, while Harleen Deol, mainly a batter, picked up her first international wicket. In total 18 of the 20 overs of this innings were bowled by spinners, India’s sole quick bowler Pandey being required to bowl only two of her four overs.

India lost Deol early, but a good partnership for the second wicket between Smriti Mandhana (whose half-century was a quite superb innings) and Jemimah Rodrigues seemed to have put India firmly in control, especially when the veteran Mithali Raj assumed control of the chase thereafter.

Shrubsole looked to have given England a late chance when she tightened things up so that the target became 7 off 7 balls, but then her final ball was hit to the boundary by Raj, meaning that Kate Cross, given responsibility for bowling the last over in the absence of Brunt, had to prevent India from scoring three runs for England to win. Almost unbelievably, the target was still three as she prepared to bowl the last ball of the match – yes she had produced five successive dot balls at the death (claiming two wickets, Fulmali caught and Patil stumped along the way). Pandey connected firmly with that last delivery of the match, but a fine piece of fielding from Tammy Beaumont ensured that no more than a single could be taken and England had squeaked home by one run. That final match-winning over, which gave Cross total figures of 2-18 from her four overs also earned her the player of the match award – and this was her first T20 international series since 2015. Player of the series went deservedly to Danielle Wyatt who batted well in all three games.

This was an absolute cracker of a match, and I advise you to check out the scorecard here and the official report here.

PHOTOGRAPHS

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