Tag: Lizelle Lee

How WBBL11 Was Won

A look back at today’s WBBL11 final, between Perth Scorchers and Hobart Hurricanes, and a photo gallery.

This morning (UK time) saw the final of the Women’s Big Bash League 11th edition. The contending sides were Hobart Hurricanes, who had won the league stage and thus gone straight into the final and Perth Scorchers who had had to win two extra matches in order to get there. The other benefit besides going straight through to the final that the Hurricanes got was that the match was played in Hobart.

THE PRELIMINARIES

The bat flip was won by Perth Scorchers. Sophie Devine chose to bat first, believing that runs on the board would give her side the opportunity to impose scoreboard pressure on the opposition. Both sides were unchanged from their previous matches (in Hurricanes’ case quite a while back, and it was one that was only half finished in bizarre circumstances – in the break between innings a ball got rolled into the pitch surface creating a dangerously large hole therein and resulting in an abandonment).

THE SCORCHERS INNINGS

Katie Mack and Beth Mooney have been a formidable opening pair for the Scorchers this season, but neither were at their best today. Mack in particular struggled to get going, and Mooney did so only because she was reprieved multiple times. Finally in the sixth a cover a catch did go to hand, Linsey Smith pouching one off Lauren Smith to send Mack back for 17 and make it 36-1. Maddy Darke, in at number three for the Scorchers never got going at all, and it was Linsey Smith as bowler who got her, with the aid of a catch by Natalie Sciver-Brunt, to make it 48-2 in the eighth over. The innings was just into its second half when Heather Graham rattled Mooney’s stumps, getting the left hander for 33 and making it 64-3. Freya Kemp hit a six, but then gave Sciver-Brunt a catch off Linsey Smith to go for 10 and make it 79-4 in the 13th over. Paige Scholfield batted well, but the last serious hope of a big Scorchers total disappeared when Lizelle Lee stumped Devine off Graham to make it 112-5 in the 17th over. Scholfield and Alana King stayed together for the rest of the innings. The most remarkable happening was Nicola Carey contriving to concede just three runs in the final over of the innings, two of them off the final ball. Carey had figures overall of 4-0-23-0, and two of those overs were in the opening Power Play, and another was that 20th over. The final score was 137-5, which did not look like enough, although if Hurricanes had taken all the chances they were offered Scorchers would probably have been all out for about 90.

THE HURRICANES CHASE

Lizelle Lee struck form from the outset. The four over opening Power Play yielded 39-0. In the sixth over Amy Edgar clean bowled Danni Wyatt-Hodge for 16 to make it 49-1. That brought Sciver-Brunt in to join Lee, and the pair made hay. At the halfway stage the score was 81-1. Hurricanes activated the Power Surge at the first permitted opportunity, namely for overs 11 and 12, quite rightly going for the quick kill (and even without that motivation, would they ever have a better time to take it than with Lizelle Lee and Natalie Sciver-Brunt both well set?) rather than waiting on further developments. Lee hit the fourth ball of the 11th over for a six, the third such blow of her innings, to pass 50 off 32 balls, and followed up by hitting four more off the fifth and another half dozen off the sixth. Sciver-Brunt joined the party by putting the first ball of the 12th over into the stands. In total the two overs of Power Surge produced 31-0, , and Hurricanes were 112-1 after 12 overs, needing a mere 26 off the last eight. Sciver-Brunt fell with victory in sight, but Lee went to a new record score for a WBBL final of 77 not out (44 balls, 10 fours, four sixes), while Nicola Carey made the winning hit, a four off the final ball of the 15th over. The margin was eight wickets, with five overs to spare. Lizelle Lee after that stunning blitz with the bat was named Player of the Match. This means that the Hurricanes currently hold both the men’s and women’s BBL titles, and that the only franchise never to have won a WBBL title is now the Melbourne Stars.

ON POWER SURGES

The Power Surge can be activated at any stage in the last ten overs of an innings. In this match it was one of many areas in which Hurricanes were superb. Scorchers by contrast took their surge for overs 15 and 16, and amassed 15-0 from those two overs, little if any better than they would have done in regular play. It is that last point, that the key is not just how many runs those overs yield, but how many more they yield than would have been scored anyway that informs my thinking on this subject. Taking it for overs 15 and 16 as Scorchers did today makes some sort of sense, effectively extending ‘the death’ from four overs to six. Leaving it any later would to me rank as folly. The Hurricanes had an easy choice today, as they had two well set batters both ideally suited to making use of a Power Surge when they took it. In general I think sides, influenced by the worry that taking it can lead to the loss of wickets are overcautious about doing so and tend it leave it later than they should.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off…

This picture and the next show mute swans demonstrating that their huge size does not prevent them getting airborne.
These starlings are not nesting in a particularly elaborate set of antlers! This is the topmost part of a tree canopy that at this time of year is devoid of any foliage.

Strikers Eliminated

An account of the match that confirmed Adelaide Strikers’ elimination from the WBBL and an explanation of why I am turning my back on twitter after ten years. Also a huge photo gallery.

The main subject of this post is today’s WBBL match, which featured Hobart Hurricanes and Adelaide Strikers. However, before I get onto that I have one other thing to do first…

A FINAL PARTING OF WAYS

After just over ten years of being on there I have finally made the decision to end my involvement with twitter. Today will be my last day on there, and I will deactivate my account today. This decision has been over a year in the making. The final provocation came yesterday morning when I saw that from November 15th (Friday) twitter posts will be used to train AI with staying on twitter being taken as automatic consent to do so. I may or may not have agreed for this happen with my own posts had it been broached in proper consultative fashion, with people being given the option to refuse, but the high handed decision to force this on all of us means that as a matter of principle I am dissenting in the only way left to me by Elon the Execrable: by leaving twitter. For those of my followers on here who are also interested in social media, I am on Mastodon, and will be posting there regularly: https://mas.to/@autisticphotographer

HOW THE STRIKERS LOST

Adelaide Strikers arrived in Hobart for what is officially their ‘derby’ fixture (Melbourne, the closest city on mainland Australia to Tasmania, has two teams, so that is their derby) with just one win in six matches. The Hobart Hurricanes were far better placed, having won three of their six games. Strikers had been thrashed after batting first in their previous match, so when they won the toss they opted to bowl in the hope of faring better chasing than they had setting.

Megan Schutt was her usual reliable self with the ball, but Orla Prendergast, given the new ball alongside her, had an absolute shocker of an evening. Strikers also dropped several catches, two off Lizelle Lee, fresh from a record breaking 150*, along the way. Lee cashed in on the reprieves, becoming the first ever to score back to back centuries in the WBBL. Her dismissal for 103 off 57 balls was something of a freak – her partner Nicola Carey essayed a fierce drive and the bowler, ambidextrous spinner Jemma Barsby, deflected the ball into the stumps with Lee out of her ground. Carey was now joined by Elyse Villani, and they maintained the tempo of the innings pretty well. With two overs left they had reached 174-2 and a score of 200 looked within the realms of possibility. Schutt put paid to that, conceding a mere five from the 19th over, meaning that in an otherwise very fast scoring innings she had 4-0-21-1. The only other wicket was the Lee run out, so with 12 coming from the final over to boost Hurricanes tally to 191-2 the other bowlers had taken 0-170 from 16 overs.

A target of 192 was daunting – had Strikers been successful it would have been their highest ever winning chase. While Smriti Mandhana was there, timing the ball with absolute precision and scoring at an incredible rate it looked a possibility – Strikers were ahead of the rate of their four over opening Power Play. It was the arrival of Amy and Lauren Smith and the easing of field restrictions after four overs that slowed Strikers progress. Mandhana completed a splendid 50 off 31 balls, but then immediately got out, caught by Chloe Tryon off Lauren Smith to make it 67-1 in the eighth over. Amy Smith had bowled a superbly tight seventh over, and Lauren Smith was continuing the good work in the eighth. Laura Wolvaardt joined Katie Mack. Mack never got going at any stage of her innings, and her dismissal for 14 off 20, caught by Carey off Amy Smith to make it 83-2 in the 11th over was not necessarily bad news for the Strikers. Tahlia McGrath, the Strikers captain, was in next, and she too struggled, managing just four before her eighth ball was caught by Callie Wilson off Molly Strano to make it 93-3 after 12.4 overs. With 99 needed off 44 balls big things needed to happen, and Bridget Patterson the new batter had some form behind her. However, Wolvaardt and Patterson dropped further and further behind the rate, even though the Hurricanes fielders started dropping catches during their stand. Eventually midway through the 19th over the asking rate became greater than six runs per ball. At this point, far too late, Wolvaardt finally really got going. It was into the 20th over that she completed her 50, a landmark greeted with a smattering of in my opinion undeserved applause. She finished the match with a flurry of meaningless boundaries – having reached 50 off 37 balls she ended on 63* from 40. The margin was still 28 runs, and in any case because of the position they were in coming into this match anything less than a win was useless for them. They now have two points from seven matches, and are guaranteed to end up with an overall losing record, which even with four teams out of eight progressing to the knockouts will ensure that they do not qualify. Hurricanes sit top of the table for the moment, though they are there only on net run rate, and the teams in second and third both have a game in hand on them.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off…

We start with some pictures from Monday afternoon.
Then a few pictures from yesterday, either side of work.
Finally we have pictures from this morning, a splendid day to be out walking.
No cormorants on ‘Cormorant Platform’ today….
…but there were some a little further upstream, near the path through Hardings Pits.
However even they were topped by this Little Egret in the shallows (The Great Ouse was at very low tide – these rocks are not normally visible).
My last picture before leaving the Great Ouse was these lapwings.

A One Woman Show in Sydney

A look back at a historic innings in the WBBL and a photo gallery.

Overnight in the Women’s Big Bash League Hobart Hurricanes played Perth Scorchers at the SCG. This was the first half of a double header, with the Sydney derby following. This post looks back at a history making performance in that match.

HURRICANE LIZELLE BLOWS SCORCHERS OFF COURSE

Perth Scorchers won the toss and put Hobart Hurricanes in to bat. Lizelle Lee, opening batter for Hobart Hurricanes, proceeded to blow Scorcher’s plans to smithereens with a display of jaw dropping brutality. The Power Play overs offered little foretaste of what was to come – Hurricanes were 34-2 after the four overs of mandatory Power Play. Hurricanes reached 50 after exactly six overs. Lee was already dominating the scoring, and she reached her own 50 off 29 balls. By the halfway stage the score had risen to 86-2, with Lee now 65*. Hurricanes took the two over Power Surge immediately on the resumption, the earliest point at which the playing conditions allow it, and 31 runs came from the two overs for no loss. Lee was now in overdrive mode, and her century arrived off her 51st ball. She was far from done. When her score reached 137 she had set the all time WBBL individual record, displacing Grace Harris. She was back on strike with three balls left in the innings and 190 on the board in total. She hit balls four and five of that 20th over for sixes to move to 149 and take Hurricanes past 200. A single off the final ball of the innings saw her to the first ever individual 150 in WBBL cricket, only nine short of the all time record in women’s professional T20 cricket, set for the Northwests by none other than Lee herself. Lee had faced 75 balls, thereby finishing with an SR of precisely 200 for the innings. Among the carnage one bowler escaped all but unscathed: 19 year old pacer Chloe Ainsworth recorded figures of 4-0-17-2, conceding no sixes and only one four. Her team mates thus had a combined 1-186 from 16 overs, an average ER of 11.625 per bowler. An average four over spell from among every bowler other than Ainsworth would have yielded 46.50 runs, so Ainsworth was either 29 or 30 runs more economical than any of her team mates would have been expected to be from a four over allocation.

After that display by Lee neither the result nor the Player of the Match award were in any significant doubt. In the event Scorchers, forced to take risks in pursuit of a huge total, lost wickets rapidly, and ended up 131 all out, beaten by 72 runs, a colossal margin in this form of the game. Heather Graham had 3-24, Lauren Smith with 4-0-11-2 was the most economical bowler on either side. Molly Strano, one of the most consistent performers across the whole ten seasons of the WBBL, also deserves a mention, recording 3-0-17-2. Ainsworth, the sole effective bowler for the Scorchers earlier on, was also top scorer for them, hitting 41 off 27 balls. Both sides now have six points, though Hurricanes have played a game more, and unsurprisingly after this match have a better net run rate.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off…