BBL11: Sydney Thunder start campaign on bright note with impressive win over Brisbane Heat
It’s been a good couple of days for the two Sydney teams in BBL11, with first the Sixers and now the Thunder rolling to wins that sound an ominous warning to title rivals.
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The Sydney Thunder have exacted some revenge on the Brisbane Heat for last year’s Knockout Finals defeat with a comfortable seven-wicket win in Canberra to kickstart their BBL campaign.
Brisbane was able to eliminate their southern rivals from the competition last season, but it was a different story at Manuka Oval as veteran Alex Ross backed up some good work by his seamers with a match-winning knock of 61 off 46 deliveries.
“I started a bit slowly because the wicket was a little bit tacky,” Ross said.
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“For me it was about navigating the ball into the gaps and then trying to find the boundary.
“The luxury that we had is that we only had to chase 140. We had the time to get in and play a few more shots when we saw the risks in our favour.”
Ross and Sam Billings (45 off 36) salvaged the Thunder’s run chase which was teetering at 3-32 with a partnership of 109 to steer the men in lime green to victory with 17 balls to spare.
It was by no means a fluent run chase on a challenging deck, but the pair eventually worked out the wicket, with Ross plundering a crucial 17 runs in the 13th over before he brought up his half-century shortly after.
“I think the way those two batted (was why we won),” stand-in skipper Chris Green said.
“They absorbed the pressure they spoke about because it was a tough wicket to get started on. They absorbed that, and then their tempo and timing of the run chase was perfect.”
The win was an encouraging one for the Thunder given they’ve relied so heavily on Alex Hales and Usman Khawaja at the top of the order to get them off to flying starts.
But they showed on Monday that they bat much deeper than that, and they left plenty in the shed with their big-hitting allrounders not needed in the nation’s capital.
HEAT GO COLD
It wasn’t the start new coach Wade Seccombe had hoped for as his players looked pedestrian with the bat and lacked any penetration with the ball.
One of the Heat’s biggest problems over the years has been their boundary or bust approach at the top of the order, and it reared its ugly head again with openers Max Bryant and Chris Lynn both getting bogged down and then falling to loose shots.
Ben Duckett and Sam Heazlett saved the innings with a third-wicket partnership of 83, but they only reached their modest total of 140 thanks to some late hitting by Xavier Bartlett, who also hit their only six.
Bartlett was the only one who looked threatening with the ball as he removed dangerman Hales in the first over and peppered the outside edge all night with his away swing.
GURINDER’S GRIND
It’s been nearly seven years since Gurinder Sandhu played a pair of oneday internationals for Australia, but he’s now starting to find that consistent form again with the white ball.
The seamer spent a few years in the wilderness but has recaptured his mojo with a couple of eye-catching performances that could turn his career around.
Just last month he picked up a hat-trick for Queensland in the Marsh Cup – his second in that tournament – and he was the pick of the bowlers on Monday night with 2-17 from his four overs to go with Daniel Sams’ three scalps.
Sandhu was able to move the ball throughout the innings, and that swing will come in handy if the Thunder’s spinners struggle for impact as they did on Monday.
Why Gades have ‘best bowling attack in BBL’
- Sam Landsberger
Kane Richardson and Peter Siddle will beat Pat Cummins to the punch as fast bowling captains on Tuesday night as Melbourne Renegades’ new-look attack is billed as the best in the Big Bash.
Richardson needs two wickets against an Adelaide Strikers batting card missing Alex Carey, Travis Head and Matthew Renshaw to become just the third player to 100 BBL wickets after Ben Laughlin (110) and Sean Abbott (109).
The T20 World Cup squad member can call on overseas signings Zahir Khan (Pakistan), Reece Topley (England) and Mohammad Nabi (Afghanistan) as well as James Pattinson and Cameron Boyce, with Nabi and Richardson the only bowlers who played for the red team in last summer’s miserable wooden-spoon season.
New coach David Saker, Australia’s former fast bowling coach, has prioritized wickets over runs and wants to emulate Justin Langer’s Perth Scorchers side, which won three championships in four seasons.
“In my opinion, and not just on paper but watching them go about it, we’re the best bowling team in the competition,” Saker said.
“We’ve got the best options. We can have a team with three or four spinners or three or four fast bowlers.
“We’ll base a lot of our cricket around being the best defensive team in the league.
“Scorchers won it year after year because they were the best defensive team – not because they had the best batters.
“They had the best bowling group and a great fielding group and we have to base our game around being brilliantly defensively.
“If you watch all franchise cricket around the world, teams with the best attack win competitions.”
Richardson texted Saker putting his hand up for the captaincy when it emerged new skipper Nic Maddinson would miss the first two games because of Australia A duty.
“He obviously read the tea leaves and saw we may have been under pressure with that, and he offered his services before I even asked,” Saker said.
“That’s a huge plus for him and the sort of guy he is. We wanted a fast bowler as captain because that’s what Australia did.
“I’m a fast bowling coach, so I’m supporting the fast bowlers union and they should be captain of every team.”
Saker conceded the Renegades are one batter short but said he was teaching his young line-up to value their wickets after last summer’s run of reckless dismissals.
“The problem solving at times was non-existent last year,” Saker said.
“I’ve only been here for two weeks, but a lot of the conversations for the young players is about, ‘This is your role, this is where I want you to go with it’.
“When the game presents itself to go a bit harder, yes, go.
“But you’ve got to earn the right to go harder – and that’s not the second or third ball you face.
“It could be in certain games, but most likely it’s the 20th or 30th ball you face.
“Don’t panic – Brad Hodge was the king of it.”
Saker loved the maturity opener Mackenzie Harvey showed when he made 55 (72) against NSW in Victoria’s Marsh Cup game.
“Everyone tells me he’s the best fielder in the world, so I’m going to be looking forward to watching that,” Saker said.
“He’s a more experienced player for our team in terms of games played, but he’s still only 22 and he’s just looked a bit more mature in the games I’ve seen him play for Victoria this year.
“He’s at a time where he could actually explode and have a really good tournament.”
The Gades got their first look at the Marvel Stadium pitch on Monday night and hope the sometimes erratic wicket plays consistently this summer.
SAM LANDSBERGER’S LIKELY XIs
RENEGADES: Sam Harper (wk), Mackenzie Harvey, Jake Fraser-McGurk, James Seymour, Will Sutherland, Mohammed Nabi, Cameron Boyce, James Pattinson, Kane Richardson (C), Zahir Khan, Reece Topley
STRIKERS: Jake Weatherald, Ryan Gibson, Jono Wells, Matthew Short, Harry Nielsen (wk), Tom Kelly, George Garton, Peter Siddle (C), Wes Agar, Dan Worrall
Teen a mix of Steve Smith and Glenn Maxwell
Jake Fraser-McGurkhas been likened to Steve Smith and Glenn Maxwell as Australia’s future batting superstar enters the Big Bash League as the hottest teenage talent.
The Boroondara boy doesn’t have the runs on the board yet but it only took new Melbourne Renegades coach David Saker a brief net session to realise why the kid called ‘Rooster’ has the Victorian camp cock-a-hoop.
“If you see him bat you’ll see Steve Smith with the hands, the way he lines the ball up, the way he picks the bat up and then the Glenn Maxwell is just the enormous talent that is just sitting there and waiting to explode,” Saker told News Corp.
“Maxi at 18-19 was the same, but it took a while for him to make a big impression and now obviously he’s one of the better T20 players in the world.
“You see things Fraser can do that just remind me of Maxi, because I knew Maxi when he was 17-18.
“There’s a lot of similarities — not so much in the way they play, but their traits.
“If he becomes as good as those two in either form of the game (Smith in Test cricket or Maxwell in white-ball) he’ll be pretty happy.”
Fraser-McGurk is expected to bat at No.3 when a baby Renegades line-up hosts Adelaide Strikers on Tuesday night.
Mackenzie Harvey and Sam Harper are likely to open the batting while all-rounders Will Sutherland and Mohammed Nabi will provide the back-end power, with Sutherland striking at more than 200 in last week’s practice matches.
Replacement player James Seymour, 29, will make his BBL debut in the middle order after a long apprenticeship as a hard worker who has walked a very different path to Fraser-McGurk.
But it is all eyes on the 19-year-old, who Saker said even strutted around like a boy who knows he has a bright future.
“He’s an exciting guy to be around, Fraser,” Saker said.
“You can just tell he’s got all of the characteristics of most of the champions that I’ve been involved with.
“He’s confident, he’s got all the shots and he walks around like he’s the best in the world — but that’s the thing people gravitate to as well.
“They know that’s the traits of the best players. Watch this space.”
Fraser-McGurk posted half-centuries for Victoria as a 17-year-old on debut in the Marsh Cup and Sheffield Shield and became the state’s third-youngest debutant.
The right-hander averaged 18 for a reckless Renegades outfit last summer but will take on far more responsibility this season, particularly with captain Nic Maddinson, Aaron Finch, Marcus Harris and Shaun Marsh absent early.
“If he comes off two or three times and wins you some games he’ll be very happy,” Saker said.
“I hadn’t seen anything from him and then I started throwing balls to him and you hear all the hype and all the excitement around how good he is.
“But then you throw balls and see why they’re so excited. He is a serious talent — but he hasn’t got the runs on the board.
“You’ve got to get some game time into him, hopefully with all that talent everything will click.
“If it only clicks in two or three games that’ll be enough.”
Originally published as BBL11: Sydney Thunder start campaign on bright note with impressive win over Brisbane Heat
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