BBL 10 | Match Preview: Rampant Scorchers run into Sixers in battle of table-toppers

The Sydney Sixers and the Perth Scorchers will have a somewhat similar objective when they will come head to head against each other in Canberra on January 16. While the Scorchers would look to extend their winning streak and keep rising in their way up on the points table, the Sixers will have the goal of strengthening their domination at the top of the table in this edition of Big Bash League. The Sixers sit comfortably at the top with 29 points from their 10 games, while the Scorchers have got back into their groove with 20 points from nine games.

The Scorchers have started gelling as a unit and have won five games on the trot. Apart from the winning streak, captain Asthon Turner will be delighted on different players contributing to the team’s dream run in the last five matches. The overseas batting trio of Colin Munro, Jason Roy and Liam Livingstone has provided them with the arsenal to take on bowling attack and a fair bit of that onslaught was visible in the last game against the Hobart Hurricanes when they chased down the target of 139 with the loss of just one wicket and 22 balls to spare.

In the game before the one against the Hurricanes, it was the trio of pacers in Jhye Richardson, Andrew Tye and Jason Behrendorff who dealt clinching blows and defeated the Sydney Thunders who are ranked above them on the points table.

All in all, the Scorchers are looking like a side peaking at a right time as the league is entering into its business end but they will have their task cut out against a highly dominant Sydney Sixers which have al their bases covered.

For the Sixers, the old dogs in Steve O'Keefe and young guns in the form of James Vince and Josh Phillipe have forged partnerships that have yielded match-winning results for the men in pink.

The Sixers were the champions of the Big Bash League last year, and they have not set their foot wrong on so many occasions. They have won seven of their 10 games in this season and the majority of those wins have come in dominating fashion.

The game offers to throw up a riveting contest between table-toppers as the Sixers will attempt to cling on their top spot and claim the ascendency on all teams, while the Scorchers would be desperate to not lose the winning momentum and will look to carry on with the habit of winning.

Sydney Sixers vs Perth Scorchers: Match Details

Match Number- 41

Date & Time- Jan 15, 2021, 1:45:00 PM IST, 08:15 AM GMT, 07:15 pm LOCAL

Venue- Manuka Oval, Canberra

Broadcast: Sony Six and Sony LIV

Pitch Report and weather

The pitches at the Manuka Oval in the early part of the league were throwing up high scoring matches with team notching up scores in excess of 200 runs, but over the course of time and as the league has aged well in this edition, the pitches have been conducive to bowling and batsmen have struggled to get going from the word go, eventually lowering the runs on the pitch.

There is no chance of rain in the capital city of Australia on the night of the game with the temperature hovering around 15 degrees.

The team winning the toss should have no doubt on batting first as the pitch will not get any better for batting in the second innings.

Sixers’ strongest XI

Josh Philippe (wk), Justin Avendano, James Vince, Daniel Hughes (c), Jordan Silk, Daniel Christian, Carlos Brathwaite, Steve OKeefe, Jackson Bird, Jake Ball, Lloyd Pope

Scorchers’ strongest XI

Jason Roy, Liam Livingstone, Cameron Bancroft, Josh Inglis (wk), Ashton Turner (c), Aaron Hardie, Jhye Richardson, Andrew Tye, Jason Behrendorff, Fawad Ahmed, Kurtis Patterson

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Navdeep Saini walks off the filed with groin injury concern; Rohit Sharma bowls seam up

Indian pacer Navdeep Saini walked off the filed on the first day of the fourth and final Test of the series in Brisbane. He pulled up his groin after bowling a good length delivery on the fifth ball of his eighth over which took the outside edge of Marnus Labuschagne but Indian skipper Ajinkya Rahane spilt the chance in gully region. In yet another sign of unlikely scenes from the Indian camp, opener Rohit Sharma completed the Saini’s over by bowling a seam-up delivery with a short run up. The move, if anything, establishes the state of crisis in the current Indian team on the tour of Australia. Later, Saini came back on to the filed, but for a brief period of time and left the filed of play once again due to the same discomfort. India have fielded four pacers, but the absence of Saini will make the case even worse for captain Ajinkya Raahane who has already dropped a sitter in the field.

T Natarajan: Dreamy Australia tour brings unlikely Test debut

Indian pacer T Natarajan is having the time of his life. He was added into the Indian squad for the tour of Australia as a net bowler but got entry into the main squad courtesy an injury to Varun Chakravarthy. Once he got into the team, his quality was enough to keep him in the team. The script was something similar for his debut in the ODIs and now also the Test as an injury-ridden India had no choice left but to field all their bowling resources at the Gabba. Natarajan has been on the mark for all these months the team has been in Australia and he was one of the best bowlers for India who kept on troubling the Indian batsmen. He has shown signs of having a great heart needed to improve his bowling with every over and net session. Natarajan has had great success and moment to cherish outside the cricket field as well with the birth of his first child and the left armer enjoys his time playing with his daughter after putting n all the hard yards in the nets. His teammate gave him rounds of hugs after he was handed his India Test cap and all the smiles on his teammates’ faces established the respect he commands in the dressing room and how happy people around him are with his success.

SMAT 2021: Abhishek Sharma, Virat Singh score centuries, Padikkal unbeaten 99 to make it left-hander's day

It wouldn't be wrong to say that today was a left hander's day in the ongoing Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy 2021 as not one but four left-handers in Jharkhand's Virat Singh, Punjab's Abhishek Sharma, Karnataka's Devdutt Padikkal and Bengal's Shreevats Goswami powered their teams to victories by some memorable performances with the bat. Virat Singh, who, only at the age of 23, has toiled in first-class cricket for six years making his debut in 2014, made a brilliant 103 off 53 balls hitting 12 fours and three sixes at the Javadpur University Ground against Assam. On the back of his hundred and some quick runs by Sourabh Tiwary and Kumar Deobrat at the death, Jharkhand set an imposing target of 231 to chase for Assam. Assam team, even after some brilliant shots from the young gun Riyan Parag couldn’t quite get the chase going and managed just 187 runs from their 20 overs, losing the game by a huge margin of 51 runs. Brief Scores: Jharkhand 233-3 in 20.0 overs (Virat Singh- 103 not out, Pritam Das-2/40) beat Assam 182-7 in 20.0 (Riyan Parag- 67, Monu Kumar- 3/23) by 51 runs. Check Full Scores here In a Group A game at Alur, Karnataka, Punjab’s Abhishek Sharma hit a scintillating hundred, making 197 off 62 balls with the help of five fours and nine destructive sixes. He was supported equally well by Prabhsimran Singh who scored 63 off 39. Courtesy of these brilliant knocks, Punjab set a target of 201 for the Railways who crumbled under it like a p[ack of cards, getting bowled out for a meager 83 and losing the game quite badly by 117 runs. Brief Scores: Punjab 200-4 in 20.0 overs (Abhishek Sharma- 107, Dhrushant Soni- 2/29) beat Railways 83-10 in 17.1 overs (Pradeep Poojar-15, Harpreet Brar- 4/22) by 117 runs. Check Full Scores here In another Group A game, much-fancied and much talked about before the tournament, the Uttar Pradesh team suffered a shocking defeat at the hands of Jammu Kashmir, their third in three matches. With this loss, the north Indian team is now out of contention of making it to the Knockout rounds. Suresh Raina tested another failure as he got out leg before wicket for a duck. Brief Scores: Uttar Pradesh 124-5 in 20.0 overs (Priyam Garg-35, Mujtaba Yousuf-3/14) lost to Jammu and Kashmir 126-2 in 15.0 overs (Abdul Samad- 54 not out, Mohsin Khan- 2/17) by eight wickets. Check Full Scores here Another shocker was in-store today as another much fancied and going pretty well side of Group C, Gujarat were rocked by Himachal Pradesh in the absence of their premium batsman Priyank Panchal. It was shocking in the sense that Gujarat, which prides itself on being an all-around heavy team wasn’t able to chase 142 at the Moti Bagh ground in Baroda. Brief Scores: Himachal Pradesh 141-5 in 20.0 overs (Rishi Dhawan 43, Axar Patel- 1/16) beat Gujarat 115-10 in 19.4 overs (Piyush Chawla-39, Vaibhav Arora- 3/16) by 26 runs. Check Full Scores here In the third game of Group A, Karnataka, who were beaten comprehensively in their last game by Punjab, beat Tripura today to compensate for it. Devdutt Padikkal was the star of the day as he hit an unbeaten 99. Brief Scores: Karnataka 167-5 in 20.0 overs (Devdutt Padikkal-99 not out, Rana Dutta- 2/41) beat Tripura 157-4 in 20.0 overs (Manisankar Murasingh 61 not out, Praveen Dubey-1/20) by 10 runs. Check Full Scores here Uttarakhand, one of the new inductees in the Indian domestic set up and played Plate Group games in Ranji Trophy in 2018 shocked another heavyweight Maharashtra which has in their ranks the likes of Kedar Jadhav, Rahul Tripathi, and Ruturaj Gaikwad. The team from the Himalayas beat Tripathi’s side convincingly by five wickets, with Jay Bista, the opener playing a brilliant knock of 69 of 51 balls to see his team through. Brief Scores: Maharashtra 141-4 in 20.0 overs (Kedar Jadhav- 67, Dikshanshu Negi- 1/16) lose to Uttarakhand 145-4 in 18.1 overs (Jay Bista-69, Shamshuzama Kazi- 1/15) by six wickets. Check Full Scores here In the two dull games of the day, expected winners in Tamil Nadu and Baroda downed Odisha and Chhattisgarh respectively. They earned the wins quite convincingly. While Baroda beat the Central Indian side by nine wickets, Tamil Nadu lost one extra while chasing 133 to finally win the game by eight wickets. Lukman Meriwala continued his brilliant form with the ball for Baroda as he returned with figures of 5/8 against the Harpreet Singh led Chhattisgarh. Brief Scores: Odisha 132-9 in 20.0 overs (Suryakant Pradhan-23, Murugan Ashwin- 3/16) lose to Tamil Nadu 136-2 in 15.1 overs (Narayan Jagadeesan- 61, Pappu Roy-1/32) by eight wickets. Check Full Scores here Brief Scores: Chhattisgarh 90-10 in 17.3 overs (Shashank Chandraker-20, Lukman Meriwala- 5/8) lose to Baroda 91-1 in 12.3 overs (Kedar Devdhar-44 not out, Sourabh Majumdar- 1/12) by nine wickets. Check Full Scores here In the only evening encounter of 14th January, home team Bengal downed Hyderabad by six wickets at the Eden Gardens. Shreevats Goswami was the hero with the willow scoring 69 not out off 48 deliveries and guiding his team home even as experienced blokes like Manoj Tiwary and skipper Anustup Majumdar went early. Apart from Goswami's batting, his wicket keeping was at another level altogether in this match as he took some sensational catches, one of it might make Subroto Paul or for that matter, even Gurpreet Singh stand up and clap. Brief Scores: Hyderabad 157-10 in 20.0 overs (Tilak Varma-50, Ishan Porel- 4/24) lose to Bengal 161-4 in 18.2 overs (Sreevats Goswami-69, T Ravi Teja- 2/28) by six wickets. Check Full Scores here

BBL10 | Match Report: Joe Burns take Heat to victory as Renegades run out of luck

It was once again a matter of luck combined with a lack of application from the Melbourne Renegades as they were beaten by a struggling Brisbane Heat at Manuka Oval Canberra in a BBL10 encounter. Experienced Joe Burns guided the Heat to the victory by scoring a 15 ball 31. With this win, the Heat have now reached fifth place in a tightly contested points table where only one point separates four teams in the middle of the table. Burns to the rescue The Heat were going well as two experienced campaigners in Chris Lynn and Joe Denly had built a 59 runs partnership timing the chase of 150 to perfection. But as soon as skipper Lynn fell to Kane Richardson, there was chaos in the Heat camp and within a span of 12 runs and 14 balls, four Brisbane batsmen had been sent back to the pavilion. Denly, Lynn, James Bazely, and Lewis Gregory, all match winners were back in the hut and the Heat still needed 33 from 23 balls with two new men in Burns and wicket-keeper batsman Jimmy Pierson at the crease. Instead of backing down to the terrific spin bowling from the Renegades, the Australian Test opener decided to take the attack to the opposition and hit Peter Hatzoglou for 12 runs in the 17th over bringing down the equation to 22 from 18. He then hit Noor Ahmed the Afghan left-arm chinaman for another 12 runs, reducing the target to 10 from 12. Eventually, he hit Kane Richardson for a four to the third man to seal the deal on the fifth ball of the 19th over. It was Burns’ 31 off 15 in which he hit four boundaries and a six that got Heat over the line in what was a tight match, albeit the scorecard unable to suggest so. Luck quotient: Lynn had plenty, 'Gades kept searching for it Luck seems to have deserted Renegades in this year's BBL as Lynn, who scored 50 off 40 balls was dropped twice, once at 22 and another time (though the ball did not reach the fielder, it was a catch nonetheless) in his 40s. If this was not enough, even after getting caught, he remained alive as the ball was declared a no-ball, not a front foot no-ball but a back foot one as Jack Prestwidge’s back foot just cut the white line of the crease. Although they tried a lot to make a match out of it, then young Hatzoglou Bowled short of length to Burns just when the pressure was mounting on the Heat in the death overs. Similar was the case at the time of the Bash Boost point. The heat needed 13 from the last over to win the Boost point, Noor Ahmed who had dropped Lynn in the last over was given the opportunity to defend it and he got swanked for a six via a damaging slog sweep by Denly, before straying down the leg to give three leg byes to fine leg and losing the Boost and a single point that the Renegades might have got. Webster gets Renegades' bowlers a total to defend Renegades, much like their previous encounters were once again found to be lacking in the batting department as after being sent to bat first by the Heat, they lost their top scorer Shaun Marsh on the very first delivery that he faced. Youngsters Mackenzie Harvey and Sam Harper tried to build a partnership, but that couldn’t last long either. Skipper Aaron Finch, who was pushed into the middle order continued his miserable run in the tournament as he went down for 13 off 13 balls. The ‘Glades were struggling at 59-4 when Beau Webster joined Jake Fraser-McGurk at the crease in the 9th over. The two then stitched together a slow but needful 58 runs from 51 balls. But just as they were thinking to accelerate Fraser-McGurk was picked by Mark Steketee in the 17th over. Prestwidge followed him as well, as not a single run was added for the next five deliveries. At that moment, Webster was joined by Imad Wasim who fed him strike at regular intervals. Utilizing the opportunity, Webster smoked 28 runs in just 12 balls to get to his much deserved fifty and also pushed the total to 149. He hit three fours and two sixes in his 40 balls 50 not out. What's next? Renegades will now travel to the MCG to play the all-important Melbourne Derby on 17th January while Heat will face the Scorchers in a fight for the Playoffs at the Docklands on 19th January.