Hobart Hurricanes coach Adam Griffith won’t brush subpar performance under the carpet ahead of first home fixture
After a taxing road trip to Alice Springs and Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, Blundstone Arena will be a welcome sight for Hobart’s players on Christmas Eve.
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THE Hurricanes have little time to dwell on their Moe mauling but coach Adam Griffith will not brush the subpar performance under the carpet completely.
After a taxing road trip to Alice Springs and Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, Blundstone Arena will be a welcome sight for Hobart’s players against defending BBL champions Melbourne Renegades on Tuesday afternoon.
The condensed nature of this year’s Big Bash means the hosts have a quick opportunity to rebound from their heavy 52-run defeat at the hands of the Melbourne Stars, which featured some sloppy fielding and ordinary batting.
And while it is a match the group will want to erase from memory, Griffith declared there were plenty of lessons to take from the showing.
“Luckily we have a game [on Tuesday] but it is important we learn from that, we don’t just walk away and forget about the game,” Griffith said.
“There are some great lessons in there for us, I thought parts of our game were really good but parts of it were a bit sloppy and that’s what cost us in the end.”
The Hurricanes paid a high price for gifting Marcus Stoinis two early lives, with the brutal all-rounder dropped the first ball he faced and then handed a second chance when a leading edge landed in between Qais Ahmad and Riley Meredith when he had just five.
On a sluggish pitch Stoinis went on to crack an unbeaten 81 from 54 balls, setting up the Stars 4-163 with an 81 run opening stand alongside Nic Maddinson (40 from 39).
Meredith rebounded from the communication error with Ahmad and leaking 13 runs from his opening over to snare 3-27, and the Hurricanes dragged Melbourne back after they had bolted to 1-118 in the 14th over.
But their hopes of overhauling the target were extinguished in the powerplay when D’Arcy Short, Ben McDermott and David Miller perished, before new BBL cult figure Haris Rauf (5-27) blew away the middle order.
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“You can’t give quality international players like that a life and we gave him two,” Griffith said of the Stoinis let offs.
“That’s really disappointing for us and then he got 80-odd in conditions that probably suited the bowlers for a certain amount of the game.
“It’s been quite a hectic couple of days and we are really looking forward to getting home where we play some really good cricket at Blundstone.
“One and one on a road trip, we take that and if we can [win] the game on Christmas Eve we will be looking pretty good.”
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