#97: Two Oustanding Individual Spells
BBl12, Game 42
Thunder 135 (Davies 45, Ellis 4/27)
lost to Hurricanes 5/136 (David 76*, Sams 4/18)
This game has a number of parallels to the last game: the Hurricanes were playing, it was close at times, and ultimately the efforts of 2 or 3 players on the winning team gave them the advantage over a one-man show on the other side.
The Hurricanes dropped Mitch Owen for this game (imagine that now) because of Matthew Wade's return, then lost the toss. Fortunately, they were apparently suited to bowling first. Riley Meredith produced one of the yorkers of the tournament to remove David Warner, and then Mat Gilkes was plumb LBW off the final ball of Nathan Ellis' first over. Remember that. Compounding the misery, Sam Whiteman was out the next ball, and a poor shot choice from Alex Ross left the Thunder 4/24. Daniel Sams joined Ollie Davies in the middle and the two stabilised until, with his first sign of any aggression, Sams holed out to Zak Crawley (remember that?) and Ben Cutting had the job to do all over again.
Just as it was going well, it wasn't.
Ellis returned for the 14th over and immediately Davies hit a convincing drive. But yet...
The shitty camerawork was only matched by Dan Ginnane's call (how did he get the job?) but Faheem's catch was on point and now, all of a sudden, Nathan McAndrew was facing a hat trick ball. And well...
Nathan Ellis is a pretty remarkable story - I'd encourage you to look up the full one at some point, but the TLDR is "NSW grade cricketer moves to Tasmania for one last shot at the big time, becomes Hurricanes title winning captain and Australian limited overs international star". Oh, and hat-trick taker. He even added Ben Cutting later, although that one was... less his doing.
"How did that happen?"
Paddy Dooley took the last two wickets and the Thunder were all out for 135 - albeit they did see out the 20 overs. The longshot of them defending that was suddenly looking much better three overs in, as Ben McDermott ran himself out and then Daniel Sams came to the party. Sams is easily one of the most erratic players I've ever seen, he can be great or awful, and today was a good day that he started with dismissing Caleb Jewell and Zak Crawley in the same over. Hobart were 3/20 and Tim David, at this point a late order hitter, joined his captain at the crease. It could have been even worse, as they immediately dropped Matthew Wade, and the rebuild began.
It lasted 2.5 overs. Ben Cutting was taken for 13 in the seventh, McAndrew another 13 in the 8th, and then Usman Qadir had an over of doom. His first ball to David ended up here:
His second here:
And his fifth in the hands of long off. The show was over! And then everyone looked at the big screen:
How do you overstep the front crease as a spinner?
That was the game really. Even though Sams came back on, dismissed Wade and Asif Ali, and got Faheem struggling badly (he was 1 off 7 at one point), David was never derailed, and even finished with one last flourish: plunking McAndrew onto the roof for six to hit the winning runs. With 75% of the season gone, this game put the Hurricanes into a finals spot at the Thunder's expense... not that that held.
. And like the IPL, the first game was something of a blowout, but still entertained. Also, Brendon McCullum was the face of this opening game... but unlike in the IPL, where it was for his mastery, this time it was a much more... grisly sight. McCullum missed a hook shot in the third over from the fast-as-ever Brett Lee and was hit square in the nose, bloodying it and turning him into something of a viking image.
