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Never count your chickens before they hatch.
It’s a lesson two-time defending BBL champions the Perth Scorchers have learned all too painfully after falling apart in a 50-run loss to the Adelaide Strikers in the Knockout.
Perth’s Optus Stadium had been a fortress in 2023/24 for the Scorchers, only losing their first game against the Sixers earlier this week in a last-ball thriller.
It was costly in that game — allowing the Sixers to finish second and ultimately secure a home final — and it was costly against on Saturday as the Scorchers were dumped out of the finals.
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For the Scorchers, success is almost second nature, having won five of the 13 competitions and only ever missing the finals twice in the competitions’ history.
It’s why the Western Australians appeared to believe the result was little more than a formality.
Before the match, the Fox Cricket coverage revealed the Scorchers had put up a message on the big screen, congratulating the side on making the Challenger — likely just testing the graphics, but it didn’t escape Strikers coach Jason Gillespie.
The coach had a staffer snap a photo.
“Yeah, wasn’t happy with that when we arrived at the ground,” Gillespie told Fox Cricket.
“I thought, ‘Geez, they’re jumping the gun a bit here in the west. I might have got a photo to show the boys’.”
It goes along with the back page of Saturday’s West Australian, which had the headline read “Scorchers V One Man”, referring to BBL leading run scorer Matt Short.
Short had scored 509 runs at an average of 72.71 for BBL13 and 150 runs over two games in two previous outings against the Scorchers.
So when the Strikers skipper was dismissed for 13 off 13 balls, bowled by an Andrew Tye inswinger, the Scorchers must have been feeling pretty good about themselves.
However, the Strikers rallied through Jake Weatherald’s 32-ball 56, while Ben Manenti’s 23, Henry Thornton’s 28 not out and David Payne’s 14 not off 8 got the Strikers to a competitive 155 from their 20 overs.
At the time, it looked rather bleak for Adelaide, with the total 20 runs fewer than the average score for a team batting first at Optus Stadium.
And after Perth raced to 0/38 off the first 28 balls, it was looking even worse.
But after dismissing debutant Sam Fanning for 31 off 20 balls, it was the Scorchers who crumbled as Lloyd Pope (4/24 off four overs) and Cameron Boyce (3/20 off 3.2 overs) choked the life out of the Scorchers.
The wrist spinners’ field day was made all the more sweeter by the added motivation the Scorchers — and the West Australian — had given them.
For the record, the paper itself admitted the headline was “part of folklore for WA in the BBL”.
It claims to have cursed the Heat in last years’ Final when it called them “nobodies”, the Melbourne Stars, who were called Perth “rejects”, hyped up Englishman Zak Crawley, who debuted with 65 not out, and mocked the Strikers as “chokers” before their 42-run loss to the Scorchers in Perth in early January.
Gillespie said he was happy to have broken the jinx.
“Incredibly pleased, especially when we read the back page of the paper today and saw that we are a one-man team,” Gillsepie said of the result.
“That gave the boys a hell of a lot of motivation. That was in the huddle and that bit of paper, Ryan Harris referenced that in ‘Ryan’s Rev-up’.
“It gave the boys great motivation.”
Gillespie revealed Harris, the Strikers assistant coach and former Aussie quick, had begun giving pre-game pep talks before each game which had facilitated the turnaround.
The Strikers started the year with a 1-4 record including a match washed out without a ball being bowled.
But four straight wins — five now including the Knockout result — have seen the Strikers on the verge of a Final berth.
Striker Thomas Kelly also told Fox Cricket post-game: “Bit of a dig at the rest of the team in the paper today.
“Said we were a stack of dominoes after Shorty. It’s beautiful.”
The result sees the Strikers into Sunday’s BBL Challenger on the Gold Coast — a short turnaround match up with the winner into Wednesday’s BBL Final against Sydney at the SCG.
With Bradley Elborough, NCA Newswire
Originally published as Strikers KO Scorchers as newspaper jinx backfires spectacularly
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