The Big Bash League playoffs begin on Thursday and they do so with a straight out knockout match from Blundstone Arena as the Hobart Hurricanes take on Sydney Thunder for the right to continue their season at the Adelaide Oval on Saturday.
The equation for these two sides is pretty simple. The winners progress to face the Adelaide Strikers at the weekend while the losers can head off on holiday with their season all over for another year. The stakes here are massive.
Hobart Hurricanes
A couple of weeks out from the end of the regular season you would have said there was no chance of the Hobart Hurricanes making the playoffs, but they have turned their fortunes around nicely and aren’t only in them, but are hosting a match to give themselves an even better chance of progressing. Getting some key players fit has happened at just the right time and all of a sudden the Hurricanes are looking dark horses for the title.
If the Hurricanes are going to go all the way and win this event for the first time, they are going to need more than just Matthew Wade and D’Arcy Short to be counted with the bat, but with a bowling attack coming to the fore nicely, they shouldn’t be ruled out. You just wonder how the Hurricanes will go if they are forced to chase a big score to stay alive after their bowlers have gone round the park.
Sydney Thunder
The Sydney Thunder did what they had to do against the Perth Scorchers to give themselves a chance of making this match, and then cheered when the Melbourne Renegades walloped the Brisbane Heat to confirm their spot in this contest. That said, they have got a bit lucky with the rain because they haven’t actually won a full 20 over match in their last six outings. That feels like it should be a concern to me here.
The other concern, and I’ve noted it a few times in recent matches, is a lack of form to too many of their big players. If you take Alex Hales out of the equation there isn’t too much for with the bat in this Thunder side, and this is an outfit who rely a lot on spin with the ball and you don’t tend to get a lot of help in that department at Blundstone so they are going to need a lot of good stuff from Daniel Sams and Chris Morris.
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Team News
The Hobart Hurricanes have been forced into a change for this match with the disappearance of David Miller to international duty. He has been replaced by Simon Milenko which seriously reduces their batting mite which might be significant.
The Sydney Thunder have made one change to their squad for this knockout clash as well. Brendan Doggett comes into their ranks in place of Gurinder Sandhu but you would imagine they’ll go in with a similar starting XI.
Betting
Although this is a knockout match with plenty of pressure on it I’m expecting a high scoring match here. I don’t really see how the Hobart Hurricanes win if there aren’t a few runs in the game and I’m not sure Sydney Thunder have the attack to restrict the Hurricanes on this ground either so they are going to have to score a decent amount of runs if they are going to come out on top in the game too.
We shouldn’t ignore that the Thunder aren’t in great touch with the bat, but you would hope that their star players will come out of the woodwork for a knockout match and if they do we should see plenty of runs in this one. The runs line for the game is at 318.5 which just feels on the low side of things to me so I’m happy to take the over on a ground which is set up for runs to flow pretty naturally.
Tips
WON – Back Over 318.5 runs for a 4/10 stake at 1.83 with Betway
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