World Cup stars, Shield victories and some solid performances in First Grade all in this week’s Sixers wrap up!
Sixers star in World Cup wins
It’s been a big week of World Cup action with the Aussie squad taking on both Afghanistan (Wednesday night) and Sri Lanka (Sunday) and importantly coming away with two wins!
After replacing Watson at 3, Steve Smith showed glimpses of the form which saw him claim the Aussie One Day player of the year award at the Allan Border Medal in scoring 95 against the Afghans and following that up with a crucial 72 against Sri Lanka.
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Brad Haddin continued his run of valuable pinch hits posting 20 and 25, both scores off only 9 balls. So far this World Cup, Hadds has scored 119 runs from only 73 balls faced at a strike rate of 163!
Mitch Starc, arguably the best performing Aussie so far in the tournament continued his white hot form taking two wickets in each match. He has so far collected 12 wickets in four games at the ridiculous average of 10.16 – the best of any bowler in the tournament!
The Aussie side now enjoy a break before their next World Cup clash with Scotland in Tasmania on Saturday 14 March.
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Blues win big vs Tassie
The Sixers stars in the Shield continued their incredible bowling feats in taking 16 over a possible 20 Tasmanian wickets in the Blues 2nd innings victory over the Tassie Tigers.
Nath Lyon (3-70), Stephen O’Keefe (3-37) and Sean Abbott (2-57) were the stars with the ball in the Tigers first innings, while Dougie Bollinger (4-23) and Lyon (3-76) did the business in the 2nd innings to help the Blues to a 10-wicket win.
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Jordan Silk was the Tigers best with the bat in the first dig in posting 54, but he was outdone by SOK who posted another big score with 87!
Since the Big Bash, SOK has been in incredible form for the Blues with both bat and ball. This season so far he has collected 27 wickets at an average of 19.33, and scored 320 runs at an average of 40 – the fourth third best average of any of the Blues!
The Blues currently sit third on the Shield table behind Victoria and Western Australia, and will likely require victory over Western Australia in their match up starting Friday at the WACA in order to progress to the Shield Final.
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Supps stars go down fighting
Manly-Warringah Cricket club side, featuring three members of the Sixers supplementary squad list for BBL|04 have gone down by 76 runs to Bankstown in the Final of the Limited Overs competition.
Sunday’s match pitted two undefeated sides against each other, but after Bankstown posted 7-263 from their 50 overs, thanks largely to Philip Wells’ 109, Manly fell away after a promising start to their innings.
Supps list bowler Mickey Edwards was economical in collecting figures of 9-1-1-28, while supps batsman Adam Crosthwaite top scored for Manly with 75 from 86 balls. His wicket sparked a collapse of four wickets for only one run, after which they never recovered.
This weekend all First Grade clubs will play a final One Day match ahead of the qualifying finals of the two-day competition which get underway on the 21 March. For more info on the competition click here.
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