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Thunder advance to the big dance

Top-of-the-table Thunder defend a below-par total to lock in a spot in the WBBL final

The Sydney Thunder qualified top-of-the-table to reach the semi-finals of the inaugural women’s Rebel Big Bash League. Today they put in a performance that showed just why they are so hard to beat.

Defending a below-par score of just 118 on a good deck at the Adelaide Oval, it was a phenomenal display with the ball, aided by a Scorchers batting collapse of meteoric proportions, which handed the Thunder an 8-run win.

Not since... well, last night's Indian batting collapse has a team in such a dominant position contrived to lose a game so eminently within their reach.

The Perth side, despite qualifying for finals in the fourth and final position, have a batting line up that should, on paper, make any bowling attack quake in their boots. Three overs into their batting innings, the Scorchers were cruising.  

Watch: Taylor drops catch, loses shoe

Southern Star Elyse Villani, whose last two innings have produced 115 unbeaten runs, crunched 23 off just ten balls. The Scorchers were on 24 after three. Villani never looked like getting out, not in the vein of form she was going through. Something miraculous needed to happen.

The miracle, for the Thunder at least, soon came. A television replay was needed, but Villani, having just sweetly driven yet another boundary, was run out in the fifth over. If every match has a turning point, this was the one.

Watch: Villani run out by narrowest of margins

From there, the Scorchers crumbled. 0-33 in one moment, 7-87 the next.

“It’s a great question,” said Villani, in reply to being asked what had caused such a collapse. “It’s a bit hard to comprehend at the moment.

“I think we were in a really good position in the first couple of overs and then we just allowed the run rate to get up to eight or nine when we were only chasing 118. That’s not good enough at this level.”

With each dismissal another international strode out to the crease in what appeared to be a never-ending treadmill of high class talent. Yet the Thunder kept ploughing on through.

First England captain Charlotte Edwards was dismissed for 18. Then Scorchers captain Nicole Bolton holed out for just one. New Zealand captain Suzie Bates looked to try and settle things, running smartly and working the ball around.

However when her eyes lit up and she poked one back to the bowler in the 13th over the game looked, unbelievably, to be spiraling out of their control. The Scorchers, with so much firepower stored away, couldn’t transfer it onto the pitch. 

Southern Stars seamer Rene Farell, who has led the Thunder so supremely with the ball throughout the tournament, was the spearhead once again. Farell’s three wickets for just 20 runs eliminated any sting the Scorchers’ tail might have had. 

Farell started, and finished, just as her captain expected her to. Farrell's first ball, to open the innings, had Charlotte Edwards moving and prodding outside off. It was exactly the ball to bowl to the tournament’s second highest run scorer. While Villani scored runs for fun, Edwards couldn't find the momentum she's so accustomed to, her 18 runs coming off 30 balls. 

Neither could any other Scorchers batters, Brunt's late innings cameo of 18 the only other innings that looked in with a chance of winning it for the Perth side. 

By the last over, the Scorchers needed 14 for the win. The Thunder looked like they might edge it. Two balls and two dots later, the game was theirs.

Watch: Villani's hat-trick of boundaries

The bowling was clinical, and Farell was able to capitalise on the capable spin of Erin Osborne (1-21) and the young Maisy Gibson (2-16), whose introduction in the middle overs precipitated the Scorchers collapse.

While the bowling - and Scorchers batting - may have won it for the Thunder, their fielding almost lost it.

In Sydney Thunder there are some of the game’s finest fielders. Behind the stumps Claire Koski is head and shoulders ahead of the other keepers in the dismissals stakes, with 25 from her 14 matches. Captain Alex Blackwell, prowling dangerously at extra-cover, has the most catches by an out-field player, with 13. 

Catches normally win matches. On this occasion however, the Scorchers offered enough chances to ensure that today, they didn’t. The Thunder were lucky.

Suzie Bates was given a life on 7, Emma Biss on 1 and then Heather Graham on 5, but all three drops cost the Thunder just seven runs in total. They’ll want to improve before Sunday, but a win’s a win and the Thunder march on.

Earlier in the day it was an anchoring innings by Thunder captain and player-of-the-match Alex Blackwell that had steered her side to the competitive, albeit below par score.

Blackwell’s innings, of 39 off 41, could have been the saviour or the downfall of her side, depending on what the Scorchers did with the bat. As no Scorchers batter was able to offer anything close, it will go down in the scorebook as a winning knock. On a wicket as good as Adelaide's, it probably shouldn’t have been.

The Scorchers again will rue what was perhaps their most clinical all-round display in the field. Heather Graham, aged just 19, picked up 2-15 and Katie Hartshorn, at 21 years old, was the most economical bowler, going for just 19 off her four overs. In these names at least there is hope for the future. Still, it’s a loss the Scorchers should have won.

Watch: Bolton's thunderbolt catches Osborne short

“Yes, I do,” said Villani, responding to whether she thought that the Thunder’s total was a below-par score. “Our bowlers did an exceptional job. I think our fielders did a fantastic job. I was pretty confident, as I’m sure the whole team was chasing anything down under 130.

“It’s a great pitch and a great outfield. We were just so very disappointing with the bat today.”

The Scorchers, raw off such a tight loss, will find little solace in the nature of their loss.

Nevertheless, by all accounts and from the topsy-turvy season they’ve had, they may later reflect that reaching the finals was an achievement in itself. WBBL|01, after all, is just the beginning.  

The Thunder, on the other hand, will settle for nothing less than outright tournament victory. The favourites tag leading into Sunday’s final, at least, is theirs.