Heather Knight’s unbeaten 54 off 29 balls carried Sydney Thunder to 4-180 and a six-wicket win over Brisbane Heat at Drummoyne Oval, overhauling 5-178 with 20 balls to spare.
Quick Score Summary
Brisbane Heat 5-178 (20 overs): Grace Harris 58 (37), Georgia Redmayne 57 (44), Orla Prendergast 28 (20). Sydney Thunder bowling: Georgia Voll 2-25, Samantha Bates 1-34, Nadine de Klerk 1-34, Lauren Bell 1-38.
Sydney Thunder 4-180 (16.4 overs): Heather Knight 54* (29), Phoebe Litchfield 41 (19), Anika Learoyd 37 (28). Brisbane Heat bowling: Lily Bassingthwaighte 2-31, Orla Prendergast 1-23, Lucy Hamilton 1-34.
Result: Sydney Thunder won by 6 wickets (20 balls remaining). Toss: Brisbane Heat, elected to bat. Player of the Match: Heather Knight.
The game swung on one over. Grace Harris and Georgia Redmayne had put on 99 for the second wicket, the Heat were 1-118 after 13 overs and a total north of 190 looked likely. Then Georgia Voll struck twice in four balls, the Heat finished with 98 from their last ten overs rather than something bigger, and the Thunder’s batters ran down the target with more than three overs to spare.
The Heat won the toss and batted, and the early drama was all Samantha Bates. The left-arm spinner gave one a bit of flight to Charli Knott, it didn’t turn at all, simply carried on with the arm, and beat the bat to hit the stumps. Knott had looked lively for 16 off 11, and her exit left the Heat 1-19 in the third over.
What followed was accumulation rather than assault. Harris and Redmayne never looked to be going all out through the first ten overs, yet the Heat reached the halfway mark at about eight an over, picking off the odd boundary and rotating the strike. Barring the Bates wicket, there wasn’t much happening for the Thunder bowlers, and the pitch gave them little to work with all afternoon.
Harris then showed the power she is known for. Her 58 came off 37 balls with seven fours and two sixes. It ended in the 14th over when she half-hit Voll in the air to mid-on, where Hannah Darlington came in to take a low catch. Four balls later Yastika Bhatia drove one straight back into Voll’s and the off-spinner held the return catch, Bhatia gone for 1.
Redmayne was the glue at the other end. Twenty-nine of her 57 runs came in singles. She eventually picked out Jemma Barsby at deep square leg off a Lauren Bell slower ball in the 19th over, and Annie O’Neil greeted Bell by hitting her first ball for six.
Orla Prendergast filled the late-innings role nicely, lofting a couple of cover drives for four and keeping the scoring rate up without needing many balls. Tahlia Wilson missed a stumping off Voll when Prendergast was on 19, then dropped a skied slower ball off Bell on 21. Wilson made up for it in the final over, standing up to the stumps to Nadine de Klerk and stumping Prendergast for 28.
On a surface this flat, 178 felt competitive rather than safe. None of the six Thunder bowlers went for less than eight an over.
The Heat’s new-ball pairing raised the question of whether Lucy Hamilton and Lily Bassingthwaighte are a future Australian bowling combination. Bassingthwaighte certainly looks a very good prospect: ten dot balls and 2-31 from 3.4 overs on a day when nobody else in her attack went under nine an over. Hamilton was more expensive, at 1-34 from three.
It was Prendergast, though, who struck first. She dropped one short and wide in the third over, Voll nicked it, and Redmayne, who didn’t really track the ball, threw out her right hand and caught it low down.
Sarah Glenn’s first over was expensive, and her three overs went for 40, while Phoebe Litchfield kept finding the boundary. The captain made 41 off 19 with six fours and a six before driving Bassingthwaighte high to deep cover, where Prendergast came in to take a good catch off the last ball of the Powerplay. The Thunder were 2-54 after six overs.
Knight then looked every bit the experienced international, defending the good balls and putting away the bad ones. Anika Learoyd brought the power, including a low, flat six backward of square leg, in a 63-run stand off 39 balls. Learoyd fell for 37, caught on the boundary by Aya Stafford with a good, low diving catch off Hamilton, leaving 62 needed from 45 balls.
Laura Harris broke the back of the chase from there. She hit six fours and launched a Hamilton full toss out of the ground in 35 off 16, as she and Knight added 59 in just 24 balls. Knight brought up her fifty off 27 balls. Trying to finish it in one hit with three needed, Harris skied Bassingthwaighte to mid-on, where Grace Harris took the catch, and de Klerk hit her first ball for four to seal it.
For the Thunder, two wins from two is the start Wibble Sports had in mind when we picked them to finish third. Two missed chances and 98 conceded in the back ten are the things to tidy up. The Heat are 0-2 after losing to the Sixers off the final ball, but they can take real positives from Harris and Redmayne’s partnership and from Bassingthwaighte.
Both sides are back at Drummoyne Oval on Thursday 5 November, with the Heat taking on the Adelaide Strikers at 3.40pm and the Thunder hosting the Perth Scorchers at 7.10pm.
