The Melbourne Renegades beat the Hobart Hurricanes by four wickets with one ball to spare at Ninja Stadium, with Sophie Molineux’s 4-22 and Hayley Matthews’ 59 setting it up before a final-ball no-ball settled it.
Quick Score Summary
Hobart Hurricanes 7-154 (20 overs): Nicola Carey 62 (43), Chinelle Henry 36 (18), Maddy Green 17 (16). Renegades bowling: Sophie Molineux 4-22, Georgia Wareham 1-23, Hayley Matthews 1-39.
Melbourne Renegades 6-155 (19.5 overs): Hayley Matthews 59 (44), Courtney Webb 29 (25), Georgia Wareham 17 (11), Deandra Dottin 15* (11). Hurricanes bowling: Heather Graham 3-24, Nicola Carey 2-30, Molly Strano 1-22.
Result: Melbourne Renegades won by 4 wickets (1 ball remaining). Toss: Melbourne Renegades, elected to bowl. Player of the Match: Sophie Molineux
The players were already thinking about a Super Over. Scores were level at 154, Deandra Dottin had swung and missed at Nicola Carey’s last delivery, and Lizelle Lee, standing up to the stumps, had the ball in her gloves. Then the stumping review came back and showed what nobody in the ground had spotted: Lee had taken the ball in front of the stumps. Law 27.3 says the wicketkeeper must stay wholly behind the wicket until the ball passes the stumps or touches the batter, so the umpires called a no-ball, the extra run went to the Renegades, and the Hurricanes were left standing in disbelief.
It was a cruel finish for a side that had spent most of the night dragging itself back into a game that looked gone inside two overs. Sent in after Molineux won the toss, the Hurricanes lost two wickets in the second over. Lee planted her front foot and the ball slid into the pad, given LBW for 6. Two balls later Rachel Trenaman stepped slightly back to play through the off side and the ball slid on into her stumps for a duck. Molineux’s over cost one run.
What followed was a slow rebuild, and the boundaries dried up. Chamari Athapaththu never got going, scratching 9 from 18 balls, a strike rate of 50, before Georgia Wareham had her caught by Olivia Porter on the square-leg boundary to leave the Hurricanes 3-37 after seven overs. The spinners were the hardest to get away. Molineux and Wareham combined for 8-0-45-5 with 22 dot balls, and by contrast the pace of Tayla Vlaeminck was the easiest to score off, her three overs costing 27.
Carey led the counter-attack almost on her own. Heather Graham backed away to open up the off side and drove in the air to Chloe Tryon at cover for 9, giving Molineux her third, but Carey kept finding the gaps, bringing up her fifty and moving on to 62 from 43 balls with 10 fours. She was the sole bright light of the Hurricanes’ batting until Matthews came around the wicket in the 16th over and bowled her as she went for the slog, leaving the hosts 5-105. Maddy Green made 17 before trying the reverse sweep and being trapped in front by Molineux, who finished with 4-22 and, according to AAP, her 100th WBBL wicket.
Chinelle Henry then provided the cameo the innings needed, upping the run rate with 36 from 18 balls and seven fours before she was run out on the fifth ball of the final over trying to get through for a second. From 5-105, the Hurricanes added 49 in four and a half overs and somehow reached 7-154, a total that seemed out of reach after the first few overs. In a match where nobody hit a single six, it was a genuinely competitive score.
The chase started with a let-off. Porter was dropped on 1 by Lauren Smith, spooning Carey to cover, but she only added 13 more before stepping to leg to slap Graham through the off side and chopping an under-edge onto the stumps. Matthews then took charge, with some power strikes through the off side, and with Courtney Webb she added 69 for the second wicket. The Hurricanes’ task got harder when Henry, who had bowled one over for 14, began hobbling and left the field after the eighth over with what the ABC reported as a suspected hip injury.
At 1-101 in the 13th over the Renegades were comfortable and ahead of the required rate. Then, by the 15th over, the momentum had swung. Webb stepped across to lap Carey around the corner and Carey targeted the stumps, bowling her for 29. Molly Strano produced a superb one-handed caught and bowled when Molineux checked her shot and sent the ball straight back over the umpire’s head, Strano leaping across to pluck it. Graham then went full and straight and Matthews, on 59 from 44 balls, just missed it. Three wickets had fallen for nine runs in 12 balls and it was 4-110.
Wareham has developed into a genuinely dangerous lower-order batter, and her 17 from 11 balls, with three fours, kept the Renegades in it until she went to heave into the leg side, the ball kept a little low, and Carey bowled her. Tryon hit Graham for four, gave herself room to do it again next ball and was bowled. At 6-139 the Renegades needed 16 from 12, with wickets still falling.
Strano’s 19th over left seven needed from the last, and Carey’s final over was very good: five were still required from two balls. Dottin swung and got an edge away through third man for four. The ABC noted that a fielder would likely have been stationed there, but a slow over rate meant the Hurricanes could keep only two fielders outside the circle for the final over. Then came the dot ball, the review and the no-ball.
The Renegades will take their first win however it came, and the encouraging signs are real. Molineux and Wareham choked the Hurricanes through the middle overs and Matthews anchored the chase, but losing 5-37 from a winning position is something they need to tighten up. For the Hurricanes, Carey’s 62 and 2-30 and Graham’s 3-24 deserved more, but three losses from three games leaves the defending champions at the bottom of the ladder. Wibble Sports picked them to finish first this season, and that prediction is looking shaky. The over-rate penalty and that final ball, two avoidable mistakes, cost them a game they had fought hard to save.
The Renegades host the Adelaide Strikers at Junction Oval on Saturday 7 November, while the Hurricanes travel to face the Brisbane Heat at Allan Border Field on the same day.
