The Sydney Thunder are putting their Friday night horror show to bed by opting to bat first at Marvel Stadium on Sunday.
Just 48 hours after their “car crash” showing against the Adelaide Strikers, where they were bowled out for the historic low of just 15, the Thunder elected to take their batting nightmares head on.
And they got Bronx cheers from the crowd when they reached 0-16 in the third over – surpassing the team’s entire effort on Friday.
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MATCH CENTRE: Renegades vs Thunder teams, scorecard, videos, updates
“That was just one of those nights that was so left field,” Fox Cricket’s Brad Haddin said.
“If you dwell on it too much, all of sudden your players start to cram up and they are too scared to express themselves.
“If they had to field again, all of a sudden they are thinking about what they’re going to do, how the wicket’s playing.”
Commentator David Hussey agreed it was the right move to bat first.
“Bowled out for 15 is a car crash of a night,” he said.
“Get back on the horse, open the batting and try and post a 180-190 score and hopefully defend that for the Sydney Thunder.”
But the Thunder are in early trouble at 3-52, with Matt Gilkes (3 off 8), Alex Hales (16 off 12) and Jason Sangha (10 off 14) unable to stick around against perennial cellar dwellers the Renegades.
“There’s a lot of pressure on Rilee Rossouw now,” Hussey said.
“How does he handle it?”
Pre-match Thunder coach Trevor Bayliss said his players were raring to go with an unchanged line up from the dire Strikers loss.
“Rather than sitting at home contemplating what went wrong, we can get straight back into it,” Thunder coach Trevor Bayliss said.
“We didn’t say too much in the dressing room after it to be honest.
“We’ll go out and make amends for it.
“It was hard to believe that you can nick every third ball.”
TEAMS
Renegades: Sam Harper (wk), Nic Maddinson (c), Jake Fraser-McGurk, Aaron Finch, Jonathan Wells, Andre Russell, Will Sutherland, Tom Rogers, Kane Richardson, Akeal Hosein, Mujeeb Ur Rahman
Thunder: Alex Hales, Matthew Gilkes (wk), Rilee Rossouw, Jason Sangha (c), Alex Ross, Daniel Sams, Oliver Davies, Chris Green, Gurinder Sandhu, Brendan Doggett, Fazalhaq Farooqi
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