The Brisbane Heat have fallen 15 runs short of the Melbourne Renegades, chasing the second highest WBBL total. Image: Brisbane Heat - Twitter
The Brisbane Heat have fallen 15 runs short of the Melbourne Renegades at Karen Rolton Oval, but there are “plenty of positives” to take from the effort, particularly with the bat.
It was all about the Melbourne Renegades batting in the first innings; opening batters Jemimah Rodrigues and Eve Jones knocked them all over the ground, hitting the boundary rope regularly for a strong start.
Jess Jonassen finally got the breakthrough, trapping Rodrigues lbw to end her innings on 52 (from 31).
That didn’t slow the Renegades down though, as Jonassen found out on the next delivery when Courtney Webb sent her to the rope for four more.
Brisbane just could not take the wickets required to slow the Renegades batters down.
After the match, Brisbane Heat head coach Ashley Noffke said his team was a little off in the field today and the Renegades really made the most of it.
“There’s some classic opportunities that we missed, we bowled a little bit off the line that we were really aiming at, put ourselves under pressure,” Noffke said.
“The girls were really honest… at the end of the day they know they need to bowl better than that, but it showed you how hard that field is to defend if batters get in.”
The Renegades finished 4/207 and the Heat had their work cut out for them in the chase.
Brisbane’s batting started far from how they’d have liked, with Georgia Redmayne falling early, caught by substitute fielder Alexandra Price off the bowling of Ellie Falconer.
It brought Georgia Voll to the crease, and she immediately hit the boundary regularly to keep the run chasing chugging along.
Noffke saw her game as significant to the Heat getting anywhere close to the total.
“Cricket always comes down to simple things.
“We get caught up a little bit in big things, but you know, I think Kaur showed the level of simple things early, to get into the thing.”
“To be fair, I think Georgia Voll actually did that incredibly well for us today – she did a lot simple things early.
“You know, normal cut shots, okay the opposition bowler bowled a bit wide and she cut, and if they got a bit full and into the pick-up zone, she hit ‘em over the top and didn’t loft the ball too high, so she did a lot of things really, really well and then she pinched singles in between to keep the ball going.
“Essentially, you’re just doing a little bit more of that.”
Voll’s batting partner fell for 23 though, Harris’ uncontrolled shot skied and was caught by Josie Dooley.
Regular wickets continued to hurt the Heat, Voll fell for 40 (from 28) and while Kimmince chipped in with a couple of big sixes, she was run out for 41 (off 20).
Lower order batters Nicola Hancock and Nadine de Klerk put some runs on the board, but ultimately the Heat were bowled out for 192 in the 20 overs.
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Noffke tried to turn it around for his players post-match and find some positives in the contest.
“If we made 193, or whatever we made today… would we have been happy and would we have backed ourselves with the ball and catches in the air to sort of defend that?
“And the answer is always yes.”
The Renegades’ attention now turns to the Adelaide Oval, where they will face the Sydney Thunder.
“[We’re] stoked to be playing on one of the major venues around the country,” Noffke said.
“I mean, it’s such a good thrill to play in any of the big venues. You know we’ve had an opportunity at Bellerive, which is a great venue, now at Adelaide Oval – the girls are really pumped for that.
“Going into that game, it’s still with same game plans.
“We know what we’re doing… The game is really simple, we do get things in our heads at time that make it a little bit more confusing.
“So my job this afternoon will be to have those little one on one chats with the players to say well done on the things you’ve done incredibly well, and the rest is all just a little bit tighter execution.
“From my perspective, I’m really proud of the girls. A lot of other teams fall over at about the 130, 140 mark and we took that game incredibly deep, right through our batting line-up, right to the back end.”
The Brisbane Heat will look to bounce back against the Sydney Thunder at Adelaide Oval on Sunday, the first ball is at 10:15 am AEDT.
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