Tasmania on top as Victoria's horror WNCL show continues

Victoria's woeful start to the WNCL season continued as they slumped to a 108-run loss to the Tasmanian Tigers at Melbourne's CitiPower Centre on Friday.

The defeat follows the home side's 144-run drubbing by the same opposition two days earlier and extends their wait to open their account, with no wins registered in four games – all played at home.

Despite a much better showing by the bowling unit that had left the batters with the task of chasing a mammoth 383 runs on Wednesday, Victoria failed to make it anywhere close to the visitor's 245 again.

Tess Flintoff tried to narrow that gap as she took Lauren Smith (2-43) for 17 runs in the 29th over, hitting a six and a four off the first two deliveries. But an attempt to find a similarly productive start to the next over had her caught on the square leg boundary off Courtney Sippel (2-8), bringing an end to her knock on 46 (47) and her team's innings on 137.

It was the lack of partnerships at top that hurt Victoria as Tasmania extracted wickets regularly after Nicole Faltum (7 off 11), who had scored a lone-hand century in the previous fixture, fell early to Scottish import Kathryn Bryce (2-24).

Earlier, Skipper Elyse Villani was the top-scorer for the Tigers with her 59 off 67, stabilising the scoring in the middle overs after the openers failed to match their 265-run stand from the previous game.

Ella Hayward, standing in as the captain after Rhys McKenna was ruled with a hamstring injury copped in the warm-up, struck the first blow to remove Rachel Trenaman on 31 in the eight over.

Sasha Moloney's right-arm off-spin then came in handy after being ignored by the Victorians during Wednesday's carnage as she removed Villani and the dangerous Nicola Carey (12 off 26) and reaped 3-26 in five overs.

Victoria would have been celebrating after getting Lizelle Lee (11 off 23) a whole 176 runs fewer than her previous harvest, but the collective hunting by the Tasmanian bowlers in the second innings left them facing the same agony.

The sides sit at the opposite end of the table, with Tasmania on top with three wins out of four games, as they go into the WBBL break.

Team	Matches played M	Wins W	Losses L	Ties T	No results N/R	Net Run Rate NRR	Deductions Ded.	Batting Bonus Bat	Total points PTS
1 Queensland Fire QLD	4	4	0	0	0	0.794	0	2	18
2 NSW Women NSW	4	4	0	0	0	1.077	0	1	17
3 Tasmanian Tigers Women TAS	4	3	1	0	0	1.528	0	3	15
4 South Australia Women SA	2	1	1	0	0	-0.494	0	0	4
5 ACT Meteors ACT	2	0	2	0	0	-0.802	0	0	0
6 Western Australia Women WA	4	0	4	0	0	-1.165	0	0	0
7 Victoria Women VIC	4	0	4	0	0	-1.595	1	0	-1

Legend

M: Matches played

W: Wins

L: Losses

T: Ties

N/R: No results

NRR: Net Run Rate

Ded.: Deductions

Bat: Batting Bonus

PTS: Total points