BBL 2021-22 | Joe Clarke's onslaught helps Melbourne Stars thwart Brisbane Heat's riposte

Not all England batsmen are struggling to dominate Australian bowlers and the pair of Joe Clarke and Ben Duckett were in full flow on Monday night and owned the Gabba ground where their countrymen started to fall off the clip in the Ashes series. 

To start with, Clarke blasted his way to a 44-ball 85 and led the Melbourne Stars to just a bit higher total than a firing Brisbane Heat batting lineup could reach on the back of a splendid knock from Duckett. The left-hander scored a 35-ball 54 and kept the Heat in the game although they were in pursuit of a mountainous target of 208 runs.

The Heat were rocked early with the big wickets of Max Bryant and Tom Cooper even before they could get going and the men in blue were in real danger of losing the game by a very big margin. However, Duckett came as a batsman on a mission who wanted to match Clarke’s belligerence and put on a partnership of 87 runs from just 57 balls with Chris Lynn, who himself scored a brilliant 34-ball 57.

Brody Couch was the pick of the bowlers for the Stars and after a double-wicket first over when he sent both Cooper and Bryant back, he came back to dismiss a swashbuckling Sam Heazlett in the middle phase of the game to completely derail the Heat’s chasing efforts.

Any hope of a Heat’s comeback was crushed by the leg spinner Qais Ahmed and the Stars went on to seal a close win albeit they would have hoped and expected a rather comfortable win.

Earlier, the new ball pair of Mark Steketee and Liam Guthrie vindicated the decision of bowling first taken by their skipper Jimmy Peirson as they obliterated the top three of the Stars’ batting comprising of Glenn Maxwell, Marcus Stoinis and Joe Burns. The onus was on the middle order after the failure of their star-studded top order and that’s when the duo of Clarke and Hilton Cartwright took upon themselves to take the attack to the opposition. 

From a precarious position of 16/3 in 2.5 overs, the duo carried the men in green to 167 runs by the end of the 15th over and the platform for a massive onslaught was set that eventually took them beyond the 200-run mark.

The opening bowling pair of Steketee and Guthrie were taken to cleaners in the end as Qais Ahmed too joined the party with lusty hits in the end overs.

With the win, the Stars have made their campaign even stevens with three wins and three losses from six games this season while the Heat got plummeted to the sixth position on the points table of an eight-team tournament.