Teams Status

Perth Scorchers

Perth Scorchers’ unbeaten start finally came to an end at the hands of Sydney Thunder on Tuesday.

The reason for their surprise defeat was a rare off-night for their bowlers, who combined to concede 200 runs. In particular, fast bowler Andrew Tye had an uncharacteristic meltdown as he was thrown out of the game during his second over for bowling consecutive beamers. To put things into perspective, Tye is the leading wicket-taker in the tournament, with 11 scalps to his name. Others, too, did little to wrap themselves in glory, with Mitchell Marsh conceding 50 (two wickets) in his four and Ashton Agar 35 and going wicketless.

Marsh had a forgettable day during the run chase as well, scoring a laborious six off 10. Colin Munro did contribute an unbeaten 43-ball 64 but it wasn’t enough.

Melbourne Stars

Melbourne Stars defeated Brisbane Heat in their last game — a high-scoring encounter — and snapped a run of two-straight defeats.

The victory would have brought relief to the Melbourne faithful but it does not hide the fact that they still had problems in that game.

One such cause of concern was the fact that it was a two-man show as Joe Clarke and Hilton Cartwright did a bulk of the scoring. In fact, eight of their 11 batters did not even manage to get into double figures.

Then, the fact that even though they had Brisbane on the back foot from the very start, they still let them get to 187, which showed that their ball hurlers were not able to go for the kill.