The Big Bash League continues on Wednesday as the champions are back in action when the tournament heads to Perth for the first time this season for the clash between the Perth Scorchers and the Hobart Hurricanes.
The Scorchers have played two matches so far and have a win and that postponed match because of the dodgy pitch in Geelong to their name. There has been just one Hobart match to date, one which they were soundly beaten by the Sydney Sixers.
Perth Scorchers
The Perth Scorchers were probably just relieved that they came away from that first game in Geelong without any injuries once the pitch started misbehaving and they made up for missing out on the chance to get off to a winning start when they competed against the Melbourne Stars in their second match. They absolutely dominated that encounter to get them up and running for the season and it would be a surprise if they slow down from here.
The Scorchers are known for restricting sides with the ball and they did exactly that against the Stars, although it should be said that the early signs are that the Melbourne outfit are going to flatter to deceive again so Perth probably need a better statement win to announce their title defence as being really on track. The big question for the Scorchers is whether they can be as good with the bat as last season without the likes of Cameron Bancroft and Mitchell Marsh.
Hobart Hurricanes
The Hobart Hurricanes have had a pretty quiet start to the season. The competition began almost a fortnight ago and yet this is just their second match. The good thing is they have had enough time to come up with some plans and work out how they want to play in the competition. They probably needed that time though because they didn’t look overly certain of what they wanted to do in their first game and largely collapsed in a heap.
The one problem with the Hurricanes in that opening game was they looked a batter light before they took to the field and that is exactly how it played out. The positive for the Hurricanes going into this one is that Riley Meredith played for his club side at the weekend so the injury which saw him reduced to just nine balls in the season opener doesn’t look to be a serious one. He and Billy Stanlake could be unleashed to form a strong new ball pairing.
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Key Players
Jason Behrendorff picked up three wickets in the opening win over the Melbourne Stars and with the Hobart Hurricanes being so top heavy in their batting unit if the left armer can grab a new ball scalp or two here it would see the Scorchers on their way.
Corey Anderson bowled brilliantly in defeat against the Sydney Sixers and if he can replicate that and come on for the run that he had with the bat in that match then there is no reason why he can’t be a key man for the Hobart Hurricanes here.
Betting
I’m not expecting a particularly high scoring game here. Matches between these two sides don’t tend to be high scoring and the runs that are scored generally come in big individual innings rather than sort of consistency in the batting and if runs do come here then I think that is how it will play out in this one. The Scorchers have an elite level bowling attack and Hobart look a batter light to me. Hobart have a good quality attack as well though and one or two Scorchers batters could be a little undercooked.
The run line is a little in the 50:50 camp for me around the 311.5 mark but one thing which isn’t is the boundary line. That is 36.5 and if one team does struggle with the bat against the class of the opposing bowling unit then that isn’t going to get touched. We’ve just had a Test match on this ground so the pitch might not play perfectly and the square boundaries here are pretty big and will be protected by the bowlers bowling back of a length. I don’t think this line gets covered.
Tips
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