Tag: MRvBH

Renegades Rampant

An account of todays match in the men’s Big Bash League, a pungent comment re England’s chosen XI for Adelaide tomorrow and a photo gallery.

The Women’s Big Bash League 11th edition finished on Saturday, and the 15th edition of the men’s tournament started yesterday. Today Melbourne Renegades faced Brisbane Heat in a night match in Geelong. This post looks back at that match.

RENEGADES RUNFEST

Things initially did not look overly bright for Renegades, with only Tim Seifert of the early batters looking good. Josh Brown managed 15 (13), which looked positively explosive compared to number three Mohammad Rizwan’s 3 (10). Jake Fraser-McGurk had just started to look like he might provide Seifert some decent support when he suffered a stupid dismissal, walking across his stumps against seamer Jack Wildermuth, missing and being bowled. This attempt to open up the leg side was particularly ill-judged given that Heat had stocked that side with plenty of fielders. Oliver Peake, 19 years old, came in at number five, and batted magnificently. He and Seifert put on 121 together in precisely nine overs (9.3 to 18.3) of the innings, Seifert reaching three figures. Wildermuth got them both in the space of three balls, 203-3 becoming 204-5. Shaheen Shah Afridi had a nightmare with the ball, which ended in bizarre fashion, when he was ordered away from the bowling crease after producing two dangerously high full tosses in a single over, the 18th over of the innings. His figures when his spell was compulsorily halted were 2.4.-0-43-0. Nathan McSweeney completed that 18th over. The 20th over was bowled by Xavier Bartlett, and in the circumstances he did well to only concede a further eight.

THE HEAT RESPONSE

At no stage were Heat close to being up with the rate, and as can happen in such circumstances that required rate climbed alarmingly in the second half of their innings. Only a late flourish between youngster Hugh Weibgen and veteran Jimmy Peirson, which produced 78 runs from 5.5 overs enabled them to keep the margin respectable. There was time in the dying embers of the game for Afridi to add a duck with the bat to his disaster class with the ball. Afridi’s dismissal, clean bowled by Gurinder Singh Sandhu, left Heat needing 17 from one ball, and they managed two off that final ball. Melbourne Renegades had won by 14 runs. Their best bowler on the day was Will Sutherland who took 3-33 from his four overs, while Jason Behrendorff had 2-34 from his four and Sandhu 2-35 from his four.

PHOTOGRAPHS

Tomorrow night UK time the third match of the Ashes series gets underway in Adelaide. England have confirmed their playing XI, with the only change from Brisbane being Tongue coming in for Atkinson. That means that Shoaib Bashir, fast tracked into the England team and kept there in spite of some less than convincing returns at test level with this specific series in mind may end up not participating until it has already been lost. However England’s actual selections work out they have made themselves look fools over Bashir. Now for my usual sign off…

These last few photos are of a massive fly past of migrating birds. There is virtually no overlap between the birds being photographed here. The pictures were taken on Columbia Way at about 3:30PM, as I returned from my post-lunch walk.

BBL 2024-5’s Big Cull

A look at today’s action in the BBL and the state of play in that competition with one group match still to play. Also a large photo gallery.

There were two BBL matches today – first at the Docklands Stadium in Melbourne the Renegades played host to Brisbane Heat, and then in Perth the Scorchers played host to Adelaide Strikers. At the start of today all four of these teams had mathematical chances of qualifying, as also did incumbent fourth placers Melbourne Stars. By the end of today only one of the four teams in action retained a chance of qualifying. This post looks at how the day unfolded.

BRISBANE BOWLERS BATTERED

Brisbane Heat batted first, and a score of 196-4 should at least have tested their hosts. Unfortunately some very ordinary bowling and a quite magnificent innings from Jake Fraser-McGurk (95 off 46 balls) saw Renegades win by three wickets with two whole overs to spare, a result that put Renegades fourth, ahead of city rivals Stars on net run rate, but with the latter having a game in hand, to be played tomorrow. Scorecard here.

GAMES WITHIN GAMES

Adelaide Strikers found themselves batting first, and started at a tremendous gallop, looking likely to score over 200 for a significant part of their innings. However they suffered a horrendous batting collapse from a high water mark of 88-2 after 7.1 overs, ending up being all out for 161 from 19.1 overs.

The Perth Scorchers innings was where games within games came into play – they needed 162 from 20 overs to win, but a close match would see both sides eliminated, one on absolute terms and the other on net run rate. The calculations revealed that Scorchers needed to knock the runs off in 18 overs or less to move into fourth on net run rate, while Strikers needed to restrict Scorchers to 146 or less to take fourth spot themselves.

At the half way stage Scorchers were 85-3, ahead of the basic required rate, but short of where they needed to be to win in 18 overs or less. When the fourth wicket pair were still in residence at the end of the 12th over Scorchers took their two over Power Surge, quite rightly – with the 18 over win in mind they could have delayed at most one more over while still getting full benefit from their surge. In the event they did superbly in those two overs, scoring 31 runs and losing only one wicket. In the course of 16th over two things happened – first Scorchers moved to 147, which ensured that Strikers were eliminated even if they somehow won from there, and then the Scorchers 150 came up. At the start of the 17th over 11 runs were needed and Scorchers had two overs in which to get them to stay alive in the tournament. In point of fact it took Cooper Connolly precisely two balls to complete the job, with the third and fourth sixes of his innings. Connolly had scored 39* (21), and Scorchers had won by six wickets with 3.4 overs of their allocated 20 unused, and 1.4 overs of the 18 that they had at their disposal given net run rate considerations. Thus Scorchers currently sit fourth, with one group game, tomorrow morning between Hobart Hurricanes, already confirmed as winners of the league stage, and Melbourne Stars who will qualify if they can win, or if the match is washed out, or if it is tied and the Super Over is also tied. Scorecard here.

PHOTOGRAPHS

My usual sign off…