WBBL: Charlotte Edwards Drives Scorchers To Finals

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Charlotte Edwards Kia Sportage might be back home in England, but who needs a car when you’ve got the England captain as your designated driver? Edwards hit 63 off 51 balls as the Perth Scorchers surged towards a last-minute semi-final spot in WBBL, joining Sydney Thunder, Hobart Hurricanes and Sydney Sixers in the knockout stages.

With the Stars facing the Thunder in the morning, it could have all been over by lunch time for the Scorchers; but despite restricting the Thunder to just 104, the Stars just didn’t align for Melbourne and they blew their chance of guaranteed qualification by 6 runs; leaving them on 14 points with a NRR of 0.034.

This meant that the Scorchers had to beat the Renegades to join the Stars on 14 points, but to qualify they would also need to slightly improve their NRR, which was 0.005 going into the final day.

It was another English woman – Nicky Shaw – who did the first part of the job, taking 3-28 as the Renegades were restricted to 108; before Edwards took the wheel as the Scorchers knocked off the runs in 15.2 overs.

Elsewhere,  the Sydney Sixers completed their remarkable “zeroes to heroes” comeback – from last place at Christmas, with just one win from their first 7, they won every match since to finish 3rd – beating the Hurricanes today on the final ball to seal the deal.

Points NRR
1. Sydney Thunder 18 0.358
2. Hobart Hurricanes 16 0.19
3. Sydney Sixers 16 -0.074
4. Perth Scorchers 14 0.166
5. Melbourne Stars 14 0.034
6. Brisbane Heat 14 -0.094
7. Adelaide Strikers 12 -0.131
8. Melbourne Renegades 8 -0.459

8 thoughts on “WBBL: Charlotte Edwards Drives Scorchers To Finals”

  1. It was a fantastically exciting night and worth staying up for to me just to watch the Sixers/Hurricanes live stream and follow the updates. Did anyone else hear Laura Marsh’s commentary on the NSW live stream? My connection kept cutting out so I missed some of it.

    Edwards is obviously leading the English charge, with 444 runs @ 44.4, but it’s good to see up to 5 of our players in the semi-finals stage. As some of the English players are now eliminated from the competition, here are their final, very interesting WBBL1 stats as I have put together (not guaranteed error-free):

    Taylor: Batting – 14 Inns, 393 runs @ 32.8. SR 115.2. HS 78*

    Winfield: Batting – 13 Inns, 239 runs @ 26.6. SR 92.3. HS 48*

    Cross: Batting – 8 Inns, 32 runs @ 6.4. SR 80.0. HS 10*
    Bowling – 40 ovs, 7 wickets @ 38.1. ER 6.68. BB 2/12

    Sciver: Batting – 13 Inns, 155 runs @ 12.9. SR 91.2. HS 33
    Bowling – 52 ovs, 17 wickets @ 17.8. ER 5.76. BB 2/9

    Wyatt: Batting – 13 Inns, 249 runs @ 22.6. SR 104.2. HS 54
    Bowling – 39 ovs, 13 wickets @ 15.1. ER 5.03. BB 4/13

    So Taylor and Wyatt enjoyed very respectable campaigns, and both delivered at least one or two match-winning performances. Winfield’s stats are pretty average – she will be disappointed not to have scored any 50s, and scored fewer runs than Wyatt. Sciver also largely failed to show what she can do, especially with the bat, although her death bowling was effective. Cross was pretty anonymous and did not make too much of an impact. More evidence that she’s not best suited to the shortest form of the game.

    I think Stars will be very disappointed not to qualify, but really they only have themselves to blame. They had plenty of chance to get those final 2 points they needed. Failing to chase down that 105 against the Thunder was the final straw. My doubts over the Heat and Stars squads now look justified. Some of their players just did not perform and you can’t afford that in this type of competition. Now eagerly looking forward to the final week and what the semis and final will bring.

    I think Sixers and Scorchers have a great chance. They have more momentum going into the final week. Both Hurricanes and Thunder’s batting has looked a bit dodgy of late and they’ll need to step up again for the last last 2 matches.

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  2. Not a lot to dislike about the WBBL – except the complete absence of a meaningful published table. It is not good enough to merely publish the Net Run Rate – a Net Run Rate is pretty hopeless without the Runs For, Runs Against, Calculated Balls Faced, Calculated Ball Delivered numbers as well.
    Without all this information it is impossible to understand what a team needs to do in order to jump ahead of another team (some would claim this is impossible with NRR even with the correct the stats!!).when tied on match points.

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    • Interesting statistics – and the English batting contribution is remarkably reflective of England’s general T20 batting so that’s few sixes and less than eye-watering scoring rates.
      I can’t help but think that the winners of the T20 World Cup will be the team with the most ’20-15-ers’ so that innings where the player scores at least 20 runs in 15 balls or less.
      Note to new England coach – winning world cups will require ’20-15-ers’, not ‘nudge-n-nurdlers’. The game has moved on.

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    • Good to know that at least some of these stats tie up with my own. I did find an error in my spreadsheet though (lol) which was causing the wrong wickets and ER to be displayed!
      Bowling figures corrections:
      Cross 40 ovs, 9 wickets @ 32.6. ER 7.33
      Sciver 52 ovs, 18 wickets @ 18.3. ER 6.28
      Wyatt 39 ovs, 14 wickets @ 15.9. ER 5.69
      Nevertheless the stats given for bowling economy on that link Tim provided look a bit dubious to me. I may be wrong but from what I can see, Ismail only played 2 games, so that should hardly qualify her for the list. Also Kapp has been almost as disappointing with the bat as she has been good with the ball.
      I’m surprised t there are no players within the 4.95 -5.21 runs per over ER as the list suggests. That seems like a big gap. If Shrubsole were playing, she’d be near the top no doubt.
      The lack of big hitting English players is a big problem for us. Sciver and Winfield were supposed to be able to do it, but haven’t really yet. We don’t have any players like Sophie Devine or Grace Harris. Clanger is right to suggest that recent squad additions like Beaumont are unlikely to be hitting it out of the park, so we will probably be in this situation for the foreseeable future.

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      • Ismail did play only two games, so I agree that stat is dubious – but she bowled the most impressive spell (in the televised Stars v Renegades game) of any quick bowler in the televised games I saw – pace, accuracy and just enough swing to bowl two good players through the gate.

        The leading English players’ approach seems better suited to ODI than T20 cricket – and yet England performed better in the recent Ashes T20s than ODIs. Interesting!

        Another source of WBBL statistical delights – which appears to have full stats for all players via the “More” buttons:

        http://bigbashboard.com/tournament/wbbl

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