BBL08 Match 9: Scorchers Blitzkrieg Leaves Strikers Misfiring

The Scorchers has been the benchmark team for the entire BBL competition for its first seven years of existence, and much of that has been based around their amazing bowling attack. Though they may lack a front line spinner, the pace attack is so potent that opposing batsmen have to find a way to score off them without losing their wicket. Such was the storm that the reigning champions the Strikers flew in to on Boxing Day when they were completely blown away at Perth Stadium.

Though teams don’t appear to like batting first, no one would have expected the smashing that the Strikers met when asked to do so in this match. Despite having already done well so far with the bat, they barely looked like that kind of form as the Perth pace ripped through the heart of their line up. The Strikers lost 7/21 in a little under seven overs as Behrendorff, Coulter-Nile, Willey, Richardson and Tye went to work on the helpful pitch provided for them. They were fast and they gained a lot of bounce and movement which created mayhem amongst the Strikers, not the least Alex Carey who found it almost impossible to get the ball off the square. He had scored only 11 from 26 deliveries when he finally fell to one of the most bizarre run outs of the summer, where the two batsmen almost stood in the middle of the wicket while the Scorchers had three throws at the stumps before finally finding Carey short of his ground to finally be put out of his misery. It took some late hitting from Valente on debut and Rashid Khan to get the Strikers even the barest chance with a total of 88. Jhye Richardson’s pace and speed was the most impressive of the bowling quintet with his 3/7 from 3 overs.

There were no scares for the Scorchers, who played conventional cricket in reaching 3/92 off 18 of their permitted overs to win the game, including seeing off dangerman Rashid who bowled his four overs for the misery figures of 0/9. As a tactic this was perfectly understandable, with no risks taken in making sure that they reached the winning total and had no scares, with Will Bosisto not out on 36 off 34 balls, while Ashton Turner took 46 deliveries to make 24 runs. 

It was a win for the Scorchers, but it must have been a terrible drag for the paying spectators who came out to watch an exciting and pulsating game of T20 cricket. This was yet another example of how T20 cricket is such a disappointing format most of the time. The match was virtually over when the Strikers were 7/46, and as a spectacle it never recovered from that. On TV it isn’t so bad because you can appreciate the actual ‘cricket’ side of the game. But most people watch T20 cricket for big hits and big scores in both innings, and that seems to be occurring less and less all the time. There have also been murmurs about crowds being down on last season, and these kind of games will be contributing to that.