Gloucestershire Gladiators Squad for the Match against Surrey Lions in the NUL on Sunday 19th May 2002
M AlleyneJ AverisM BallK BarnettI FisherM HardingesJ LewisR RussellM SmithJ SnapeC SpearmanC TaylorM Windows
Somerset Board Eleven manager Peter Robinson has named a strong side to play against Somerset at the County Ground on Tuesday.The Board XI includes several players who could themselves force their way into the Somerset first team so both sides will very fiercely contest the game.Captained by Kevin Parsons from Taunton St Andrew’s the side named is: Luke Stokes (Millfield School), Tom Webley (Bournemouth CC), Michael Coles (Bridgwater CC), wicket-keeper Tim Burt and Rob Travers (both Glastonbury CC), Kevin Sedgebeer (Taunton St Andrew’s), Russell Jones (Taunton CC) and Arul Suppiah who also played for Taunton CC last year. Two young fast bowlers from the Somerset staff will complete the Board XI team.The game gets under way at 11am and will be forty-five overs each side.Admission to the ground is free, and the bar will be open all day and will serve refreshments and light lunches as usual.
England Women are using artificial intelligence (AI) to inform selection using a system head coach Jon Lewis says proved crucial in last year’s drawn Ashes series.Lewis was first exposed to the technology, provided by London-based company PSi, while coaching UP Warriorz in the inaugural WPL last year. He has since spoken with the likes of England Rugby Union coach Steve Borthwick about the system, also used by English rugby league side Wigan Warriors and English Football League One side Wigan Athletic, which allows coaching staff to simulate various match-ups and scenarios.”We are able to run simulated teams versus the simulated opposition to give us an idea about how those teams may match up against each other,” Lewis said on Friday after revealing England’s white-ball squads to host Pakistan from next week.”I can send multiple different lineups to the company and they run, I think it’s about 250,000 simulations per team that I send with all the different permutations that could happen through the game.”What I would say is it’s not how we select the side, but it’s one part of selection that we use to help understand what could possibly happen in the future. We used it very successfully in the Ashes last summer with match-ups against the Australian side.”Related
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Lewis said the research methods were impacted somewhat by a gap in the quality of historical data in the women’s game, a situation he believes will improve amid an increasingly packed international schedule and growing franchise scene. And while he said the tool was particularly useful in helping to make borderline selection calls, he would always opt for a people-first approach.”Obviously we’re on the ground with the people and that’s probably the first thing that we look to in terms of selection, which people are playing well, we use our cricketing eye,” he said. “But it’s one small part of what we do and it’s really interesting, and it played out really well last summer against Australia.”I think it will help with borderline decisions in terms of selections and match-ups. Will it ever be at the front, the thing that selects the team? I would say, in my view, no. Other coaches may feel very differently, but it is really interesting.”AI was used throughout last summer’s Ashes and Lewis pointed to the T20 leg, which England won 2-1 to get back into the series after losing the one-off Test, as a moment when it came to his aid in weighing up the merits of two players who were “both in really good form and were both really selectable”.”There was one selection in particular last year,” he said. “We saw a real strength in Australia and we matched up our strength, our best bowlers, to that part of the game against Australia last year. That worked really, really well for us. That helped us win the T20 series in particular and that got us back in the Ashes.”The players were both players that I was thinking about picking. So it did help me with those selections and it turned out that it worked out really well. So yeah, it can help selections, but my go-to would be get your people right first, get them all in the right head space, get their games in order, and then use data to support around selection.”England Women’s squads vs Pakistan•ESPNcricinfo Ltd
From data to people, England have just completed a bonding trip to the Lake District, which involved a number of team-building exercises including cold-water swimming, designed to see how players responded in situations that, for many, were outside their comfort zones.”We spend a lot of time in the nets and we spend a lot of time thinking and practising about how to improve those parts of our game,” Lewis said. “However, the game of cricket is a real tactical game. It’s a game of chess. You need to be able to be a really clear thinker under pressure and you need to be able to manage the anxieties that are around cricket, not only on the field, but the anxieties that all players face off the field as well.”We worked a lot on how to manage anxiety and how to manage pressure and to do that, sometimes you’ve got to take players out of the environment that they’re normally in. When you do that, you take away, I suppose, the hierarchy of the group a little bit and everyone becomes very even. Then what you start to see is different people voicing opinions, different people giving advice to each other, and I suppose the group connecting on a different level than they would do around cricket.”We did a really powerful session around facing our fears and the girls were really, really honest about what their fears were around being part of an England cricket team. There was some really interesting stuff that came out of that and that will really help us as a coaching group manage our players and help them to become more rounded people first and then better cricketers at the same time.”The players, some of them liked the activities that we were doing and some of them didn’t, and that caused different types of stresses and hopefully we help them with some ways to deal with those things.”
Liam Livingstone is a minor doubt for England’s opening fixture of the men’s T20 World Cup against West Indies on Saturday after suffering a finger injury during their first warm-up match against India in Dubai.Livingstone was injured while dropping a catch at deep midwicket during England’s seven-wicket defeat, when Ishan Kishan pulled Chris Jordan into the leg side. Livingstone appeared to lose the ball in the lights – which were not as bright as in most internationals, with the game played at the ICC Academy Ground in Dubai – and immediately looked in pain, with swelling visible on the little finger of his left hand.He left the field alongside England’s physio, with Sam Billings coming on as a substitute fielder, and took no further part in the match. An England spokesperson said that the injury would be assessed “in [the] next 24 hours” once the swelling had gone down. In the short term, he appears unlikely to play a part in Wednesday’s warm-up match against New Zealand in Abu Dhabi.Moeen Ali, who lifted England to a competitive 188 for 5 thanks to an innings of 43 not out off 20 balls, played down the concern. “I think he’s alright,” he said. “I think it’s just bruising on the back of the hand but I think he’ll be fine.”Obviously it was a bit of a scare at the time but he said it was fine, so hopefully he’s all good. He’s a brilliant player – he’s been playing really well over the last couple of years. Hopefully he can carry that form into the World Cup and I feel like it’s going be a big stage for him.”Related
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Livingstone had earlier hit 30 off 20 balls including four fours and a straight six from No. 5, before taking 1 for 10 in his two overs including the wicket of Virat Kohli. He is one of England’s three spin options in their World Cup squad and again displayed his versatility with the ball, generally bowling legbreaks to India’s right-handers and offbreaks to their left-handers.His injury may mean England avoid having to make a difficult selection decision ahead of their opening fixture of the tournament. They opted to rest Eoin Morgan on Monday, who will return to the side as captain, and with Jason Roy, Jos Buttler and Jonny Bairstow all certain to start, they would have to leave out one of Livingstone, Moeen or Dawid Malan, or change the balance of their side by dropping a seamer in order to accommodate him.Livingstone has only played eight T20 internationals but it will be a significant blow to England if his injury proves to be serious. He was the standout short-form batter in the English summer, averaging 54.46 and striking at 167.41 in 20 innings across England’s T20I series against Sri Lanka and Pakistan, the Hundred and the T20 Blast. Despite a lean run in the IPL for Rajasthan Royals, he offers a vital all-round option in the squad, not least with Ben Stokes and Sam Curran both missing the World Cup.Moeen, meanwhile, continued from where he had left off in the IPL, having hit 37 not out off 20 balls in Chennai Super Kings’ victory against Morgan’s Kolkata Knight Riders in Friday’s final, and said that he had been keen to keep his run of form going. “Eoin asked me if I was happy to play or if I wanted to play this game, considering we only just played the other day,” he said. “I feel like I’m playing well, so I wanted to keep playing. I think Eoin will come back in the next game.”Moeen was a key man for Chennai with the bat, averaging 25.50 and striking at 137.30 while generally batting at No. 3 or 4. He said that he had “loved” the responsibility he had been given with the bat, but conceded that with England’s top-order strength, he might not have such a clearly defined role in the World Cup.”I absolutely loved it,” he said. “Obviously when you win a competition like the IPL it’s amazing and with the role I was given, I felt like I was quite important to the team. I’m just grateful that I played and did pretty well for them. As a team I thought we were great – we had great fun. I felt like I learned a lot with the experienced players that we had.”The reality [is that] there are so many good players, if you look at the team we [England] have and the batters that we have – it’s quite scary, actually. My role could change but the good thing is I feel like I could play any type of role. If a chance does come, I can bat No. 6 or 7 [or] I can bat up the order, so I’m just trying to get myself ready and be in a good frame of mind. Whatever role I’m given, I’m hopefully going to do well in.”
The ECB is set to award a new batch of domestic regional contracts for women’s cricketers.Forty-one domestic players signed deals last year, hailed at the time as “the most significant step forward for the women’s game in recent years” by Clare Connor, the ECB’s director of women’s cricket, and ESPNcricinfo understands that the ECB will fund one further contract at each of the eight regional centres for 2021-22, with confirmation expected later this week.The announcement will round off a breakthrough summer for women’s cricket in England and Wales, which was the first full season of the new regional structure. There were unprecedented attendances at domestic fixtures in the Hundred – which had been due to launch in 2020 but was postponed by a year due to Covid-19 – while the England team edged out India in their multi-format series and beat New Zealand in both the T20I and ODI legs of their tour.”From November 1 we’ll have nearly half the players involved in those competitions [the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy and Charlotte Edwards Cup] on pro contracts,” Connor told ESPNcricinfo. “You add in the value of the Hundred contracts as well, and in terms of professional status for female players, we’ve really shifted over the last couple of years.”We’ve got to keep building that and investing in it, but the eight regions have done a tremendous job over year one or the first 18 months, and got lots of those players really ready for the Hundred. By it being postponed, lots of the players had already had a year in their regional setups and they were really ready to go.”The ECB has been working with the Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA) in recent weeks to solve some of the “teething problems” identified by players in the first year of their new contracts. The PCA submitted a paper to the ECB based on feedback from players earlier in the summer and the issues have been discussed and worked through.”There’s certainly been teething problems with the way the new structure has been implemented,” Daryl Mitchell, the PCA’s director of cricket operations, told ESPNcricinfo last month. “Probably the No. 1 priority has actually been getting a bit more structure and consistency around facilities.Related
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“If we can get to a place where teams have one training base, one playing base, and continuity of training schedules from week to week with plenty of notice, then I think that will alleviate a lot of the problems that we’ve found around things like expenses, not knowing where to live because you’re using three different venues for training – particularly within London – and also having a consistent structure to allow players to do other things outside of cricketing commitments, like coaching or other interests for example, in terms of earning more cash over the winters in particular.”The women’s executive team at the ECB and the PCA are very much on the same page on a lot of it, trying to improve that experience for a professional in the women’s game. We’ve had some very positive discussions as to how we can improve things, certainly with regards structure and facilities which are the No. 1 priority.”Connor added: “Whenever you do something new, and quite significant, you would be foolish to not expect a few bumps in the road or teething problems, but those have been mostly ironed out, I think, with things like expenses policies and equality principles with men’s contracts, and we’re working really closely with the PCA on all of that.”I’m really pleased with how it’s all going, and there’s nothing that can’t be overcome in term of those little bumps in the road, and the players are thriving so that’s ultimately what we care about.”
Jacob Bethell was born and raised in Barbados but is set to make his Under-19 international debut against West Indies this week, after being named as one of England’s captains for a six-match one-day series.Bethell, a spin-bowling allrounder, grew up in the Caribbean and studied at both Harrison College in Barbados and Rugby School in the UK. He quickly became part of Warwickshire’s age-group system, signing a professional deal with them at the start of this year and has since made first-team debuts in both the T20 Blast and Royal London Cup.Bethell will split the captaincy duties with Tom Prest, the Hampshire batter who made 303 in the Second XI Championship earlier this summer and top-scored in last week’s dramatic Blast quarter-final win against Nottinghamshire.England’s Under-19s have not played since they won the plate at the World Cup in January-February 2020 and this series will be their first under Richard Dawson, who was appointed as the ECB’s elite performance pathway coach earlier this year.Related
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Other notable inclusions in the squad are Sussex’s Danial Ibrahim and Archie Lenham, both of whom recently turned 17 but have made regular first-team appearances in the County Championship and Blast respectively this season, Somerset seamer Sonny Baker, and Northants batter James Sales – the son of club legend David.”I’m excited to see the group in action and to see how they fare against their international peers,” Dawson said. “It’s a big opportunity for the players, and it’s their first step on the international pathway.”It’s testament to the quality of our young players that we may lose a few during the series, should they be called into their county’s first-team squad. We’ll be communicating and collaborating with the counties throughout and we’ve selected a group to cover that eventuality, and we’re looking forward to getting going.”West Indies announced an 18-man touring party last week, with Ackeem Auguste due to captain the side and Giovonte Depeiza as his deputy. The six-match series runs from September 4-17, with the fixtures split between Beckenham and the Polo Farm ground in Canterbury.England Under-19s squad: Jacob Bethell, Tom Prest (captains), Rehan Ahmed, Tom Aspinwall, Sonny Baker, Nathan Barnwell, George Bell, Josh Boyden, James Coles, Alex Horton, Dan Ibrahim, Archie Lenham, Will Luxton, Harry Petrie, James Rew, James Sales, Fateh Singh, George ThomasWest Indies Under-19s squad: Ackeem Auguste (captain), Giovonte Depeiza (vice-captain), Onaje Amory, Anderson Amurdan, Justin Beckford, Teddy Bishop, Carlon Bowen-Tuckett, McKenny Clarke, Rivaldo Clarke, Nathan Edward, Andel Gordon, Sion Hackett, Justin Jagessar, Johann Layne, Anderson Mahase, Matthew Nandu, Isai Thorne, Vasant Singh
ScorecardFinding the silver lining to the cloud is a necessary skill for the county cricket watcher at this time of year.It is not just enduring the inevitable bouts of rain and cold weather they will encounter in the early season – we lost almost exactly half a day here – but that, increasingly, they have had to accept their team’s needs are so far down the administrators’ list of priorities that the chances of putting out a full-strength side are minimal.Despite all the ECB’s talk of communication and transparency – a word that is hard to square with the non-disclosure agreements that have bound county officials to secrecy in recent times – associated with the new-team T20 competition, there is a sense of disenfranchisement pervading county spectators at present that suggests their administrators have stopped representing or even listening to them. Really, they may as well just slap county spectators in the face when they buy a ticket and have done with it. The sooner supporters have a collective voice the better; the Cricket Supporters’ Association may be the partial answer.There was a time when it would have been unthinkable to allow England’s best players to grace another nation’s domestic tournament during the county season, as is the case with Ben Stokes, Chris Woakes and several others at the IPL. And while most people will understand the well-intentioned reasons – they can gain wealth and useful white-ball experience before a global limited-overs event – they might also reflect on the costs: it is inevitable that the standard of the County Championship will be diluted by the absence of its best players.Just as it is inevitable that England will struggle to produce spin bowlers – or batsmen with experience of playing spin bowling – while so much of the season is pushed into the margins (counties will have played eight of their 14 Championship matches by the end of June) and medium-paced nibblers are disproportionately important. It is many years since England produced a legspinner as talented as Mason Crane; there is something wrong with a system that cannot find a space for him in a side.The ECB may claim it is keen to prioritise Test cricket, but it is hard to ignore the conclusion that it has prioritised white-ball (especially T20) cricket at every opportunity in recent months. The scheduling of this season’s T20, with matches in a block, is the primary reason so high a proportion of the Championship has to be played so early in the season and the introduction of another T20 competition, to be played at the same time as the 50-over competition, will equally compromise England’s performances in the World Cup.Really, it tells you everything you need to know about the future shape of cricket that the new-team T20 competition is scheduled to start on 24/7/2020. Yes, the days of endless T20 are almost upon us. And good luck in the 2023 World Cup if the top 110 players in the country haven’t played domestic 50-over cricket for four years.How, really, can the absence of Jonny Bairstow – who hasn’t played first-class cricket this year – in this match be justified? He was, after all, free to go to the IPL but, having not been picked-up in the auction, has been rested from the Championship and is instead summarising for Sky. It is just another example of the way the game’s administrators continue to demean and degrade the competition they should protect and promote.If only they believed in it as much as the 1.1 million who listened to the BBC’s commentary on the Championship’s first round. If only they believed in it enough to invest the (circa) £35m ring-fenced for the first year of the new-team competition into the NatWest Blast. If only they believed that the return to free-to-air they foresee for the new competition would also revive the old. Alas, it seems the ECB has lost faith in its own products and is therefore prepared to risk their health in search of something new.None of this is the individual players’ faults. They have been encouraged to rest or play in the IPL. But the danger of such policies is that, in time, they weaken the Test side. We saw in India and Bangladesh how England’s issues against spin can be exposed and, if the gap between county and Test grows wider, we will see further reverses at Test level. It is understandable that the ECB wants to prioritise white-ball cricket – it may even be right to do so – but it would be nice if they were a little more open about it. You could make a strong case that the ECB represents one of the most serious threats to the future of Test cricket.The silver lining to all this is that, had Yorkshire been at full strength, it is highly likely that Ben Coad would not have won selection for these opening matches of the season. But with Liam Plunkett, David Willey, Jack Brooks and Ryan Sidebottom all absent against Hampshire last week due to injury, Coad was drafted into the side and responded with eight wickets in the game.It was similar here. Taking advantage of some early season assistance – there is nothing the matter with this pitch – and the fragility of Warwickshire’s batting, he claimed four more wickets to reduce Warwickshire to 77 for 7 moments after lunch. He is currently the leading wicket-taker in Division One.If one or two of his wickets here owed something to reckless batting – William Porterfield drove to mid-off as he attempted to thrash one through the covers – several others were the result of fine, probing bowling. Alex Mellor edged a beauty on off stump that demanded a stroke, Jonathan Trott’s attempt to drive into the leg side was punished by a touch of away movement and Rikki Clarke (who has not accepted a one-year contract extension in the hope of securing his future until the end of 2019), was struck on the back pad as he pushed forward at another that left him.In between times Ian Bell was, for the second match in succession, punished for attempting a lavish drive unsuited to the conditions or the match context, Tim Ambrose was drawn into a drive at a good ball that left him in the air and Sam Hain was beaten as he played around one that may have nipped back.It wasn’t that Warwickshire batted horribly. It was that they batted without the requisite discipline for such conditions. It was that, when patience was required, they pushed at balls that could have been left and tried to turn balls that should have been met with a straight bat into the leg side. These are early days and they have the quality to turn things round, but they are earning the title of relegation favourites.This all left Yorkshire in a strong position not only in the game, but in terms of their long-term planning. They had appeared to be entering a transitional phase with the likes of Sidebottom (39 and retiring at the season’s end), Brooks (33 in June), Steve Patterson (34 in October), Plunkett and Bresnan (both 32) at the stage of their careers where it would make sense to start lining up replacements. The emergence of Coad, who bowls at fast-medium pace and, on this evidence, moves the ball away from the right-hander, suggests there are good-quality reinforcements on the staff.Willey’s return slightly ahead of schedule following shoulder surgery was also welcome. If he was understandably a little rusty in terms of his line, he generated decent pace and will have encouraged the selectors ahead of the Champions Trophy squad announcement in about 10 days.Contrast all this with Warwickshire. Only three members of this Warwickshire side are aged under 30 and perhaps only Hain would gain selection in a full-strength team. Their relative strength in recent years has made it harder for new players to force their way into the team and, of those that have, a couple (Varun Chopra and Laurie Evans) have left and a few others (Ateeq Javid and the likes of Jonathan Webb and Freddie Coleman) have not kicked-on as anticipated. As a result, Warwickshire are reliant on diminishing returns from a very talented group of players, but one that is – in several cases – just a little bit past its sell-by date.Here Jeetan Patel and Keith Barker provided something of a fightback with an eighth-wicket stand of 53 in 56 balls as the softer ball rendered batting slightly easier. But when Adil Rashid came into the attack and promptly bowled Patel with a googly, it left Yorkshire well on top.
With only three matches left in the UAE, the Pakistan Super League and its franchises are beginning the process of figuring out which foreign players will travel to Lahore, where the final is scheduled for March 5.On Sunday evening in Dubai, Karachi Kings became the last team to qualify for the play-offs. They begin on Tuesday in Sharjah, with Peshawar Zalmi and Quetta Gladiators, the two teams that finished top, playing each other. Looming over the games, though, is the question of who from the foreign contingents of the four teams is ready to travel to Lahore.The PSL management is expected to further brief the overseas players before the play-offs begin and the primary aim remains to try and convince as many of them as possible to make the trip. However, preparations are also underway to create a nominated pool of foreign players willing to travel in case the finalists’ current roster pulls out.On Monday, the Punjab government finally gave a public go-ahead to the staging of the final in Lahore. In theory, that ends the uncertainty of recent days caused by a wave of terrorist attacks across Pakistan that have claimed over 100 lives, including a suicide attack in Lahore two weeks ago when 13 people were killed.There was another blast in the city last Thursday, when at least seven people perished, heightening nerves and casting fresh doubt on the sense of bringing the final to Lahore. Though reports initially said it was a bomb, the government has since claimed it to be the result of a gas leak from a cooking cylinder.Senior league officials have worried over the fluidity of the situation, and had been waiting for a definitive go-ahead from government authorities. With that now in hand, the situation of the foreign players needs resolution. Najam Sethi, the PSL chief who was in Pakistan on Monday, said: “I will be going back to Dubai now and once the finalists are confirmed I will again talk to the franchise owners and foreign players. We have also prepared a back up list of foreign players in case the overseas signings of the finalist teams refuse to come to Lahore. “Kumar Sangakkara, who was in the team bus which was attacked in Lahore eight years ago, is almost certain not to travel to the city again•PCB/PSL
Of the four remaining teams, Peshawar are the most confident their foreign contingent will go to Lahore should they reach the final. No player, however, has come outright and said so yet. And though no official word has come from Islamabad United, it is believed neither Brad Haddin nor Shane Watson will stay on.The two teams who might face greatest difficulties are Quetta Gladiators and Karachi Kings. Kevin Pietersen, of the former, will almost certainly not travel and Tymal Mills is also unlikely. Others such as Luke Wright and Rilee Roussow, who were considering making the trip, are said to have reassessed after the recent spate of attacks.Officially Karachi say their players will make a decision once the team’s fate is clear. Until then, it is said, their players do not want to “jinx” their chances of getting to the final by talking about it.It is almost inconceivable that Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene, two players who were in the team bus in Lahore when it was attacked eight years ago, will travel. They have told officials that they cannot take the decision alone and have to consult with their families. And the call they make could potentially have an impact on what Chris Gayle and Kieron Pollard do as well.One-off payments, ranging from USD 10,000 – 50,000, are being offered to foreign players should they agree to play in Lahore. That, as one foreign player considering taking part in the final pointed out, brings its own complications. “What is the difference in me playing in Lahore under a security threat and a Pakistani player doing so?” he said. “In any attack both are at risk. And physios and masseuses? A life is a life, mine or a Pakistani player’s.”In case the teams end up severely shorthanded, a pool of nominated foreign players could be roped in. The list, initially of 54 names, has now grown to above 60 and is said to be composed of those who were not picked in the draft last October as well as additional names from outside the draft, who are willing to travel to Pakistan.Each franchise will nominate five to six players from the long list and hand it to the PSL, who hope that ultimately, accounting for common names that appear in multiple lists, they have a shortlist of 12 to 15 waiting on standby to participate in the final.
Scorecard and ball-by-ball details2:15
Macpherson: Sixers have amazing depth in line-up
Like they did in the first edition of the Women’s Big Bash League, the Sydney Sixers thrashed the Hobart Hurricanes to book their spot in the final. Last year, the margin was ten wickets (Duckworth-Lewis method) and this time, under the scorching Brisbane sun, it was equally emphatic: 103 runs.Alyssa Healy’s 77 provided the backbone of a charge to 169, before the Hurricanes were bowled out for just 66. The Sixers will travel to Perth to face the Scorchers on Sunday and, if their male counterparts beat the Brisbane Heat at the Gabba, only two clubs will compete the finals.A Healy hurricane
Healy has reveled as captain since she took over from an injured Ellyse Perry. In her first game as stand-in captain, she made 84 off 56 against the Melbourne Renegades. Here, she was even more belligerent, making a magnificent 77 off 45 balls before cutting Hayley Matthews to point in the 13th over.Having opted to bat first, Healy thumped Amy Satterthwaite over long-on for six in the second over and by the time Ashleigh Gardner became the second batsman to be dismissed, caught brilliantly at point, Healy had scored 41 of the Sixers’ 49 runs. In the following over, she brought up her half-century with a pull over midwicket for six, and went on to play a cover drive, late cut and reverse sweeps for boundaries. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of her innings, however, was her running between the wickets and the ability to turn ones into twos.She was dismissed with the Sixers on 108, and resourceful knocks from Sara McGlashan (38), who was carrying a hamstring injury, and Marizanne Kapp (36 not out), left the Hurricanes with a stiff target of 170.In her two matches as stand-in captain, Alyssa Healy has scored 161 runs•Getty Images
Sixers’ fabulous fielding
Gardner has been the competition’s break-out star this season, largely due to the three half-centuries that have underpinned her brilliant batting efforts. But her bowling – she took her ninth and tenth wickets of the season, including the vital one of Hayley Matthews for a duck – and fielding have been excellent, too. It was a moment of magic from Gardner that nipped a solid start from the Hurricanes in the bud. She lobbed an off-break up at Erin Burns and it was drilled hard back at her, but barely a foot off the ground. She dropped low in her follow-through and took a fine catch, which was so tight that it had to be reviewed.That was not the last of the Sixers’ superb interventions in the field. Each of the seam bowlers hammered away with a consistent line and length, while the spinners were tough to get away. Angela Reakes took an excellent catch in the deep to get rid of Emma Thompson, but it was the run-outs of Heather Knight and Amy Satterthwaite – with sharp throws from Kim Garth and Dane van Niekerk (the latter a direct hit) – that guaranteed the Hurricanes would fall short.And yet… Hobart self-destruct
Hobart were out-classed but they also contributed to their own downfall. Healy was dropped on 18 by Brooke Hepburn at mid-on, and on 60 by Thompson at short third man, while Kapp was given a life on 13. With the bat, Satterthwaite was responsible for the run-outs of Knight and herself. They are the Hurricanes’ most reliable batsmen and once they fell, there was no way back for the side.The best two teams in the final
This was a complete performance from the Sixers and showed the intimidating depth in the squad. Amy Jones, the England international, could not make the side for this, while Lisa Sthalekar’s experience was not required either. Perry has been ruled out of the final but, given the Sixers’ dominance in the league stages and their performance today, the final against the Scorchers could serve up a humdinger.
Scorecard and ball-by-ball details3:45
Chappell: Pakistan have shown they can adjust quickly
Pakistan’s bid for a world-record chase fell a mere 40 runs short, allowing Australia to exhale after coming close to coughing up a match they had dominated over the first four days and nights at the Gabba.Asad Shafiq’s sublime century and sturdy support from Yasir Shah took Steven Smith’s men close to their wit’s end, but a Mitchell Starc short ball did for Shafiq when the visitors needed only 41 runs to steal the most fanciful of victories. Three balls later, Smith struck the final blow, running out Yasir from slip after the No. 10 wandered out of his crease, ending a match that had seemed destined for a much wider margin.Starc’s speed and direction were vital throughout, and it remains to be seen whether the huge number of overs bowled by him and Josh Hazlewood will have an impact on their physical preparation for the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne. The Australians had a hangdog air in the field for much of the final day, and their relief at the final wickets was palpable.Pakistan, by contrast, will now feel they are very much in the series, with matches on friendlier surfaces in Melbourne and Sydney to come. The Gabba has always been a major competitive advantage for Australia, and the close result will afford plenty of confidence to the tourists even if they are now 1-0 down with two to play.When play began half an hour early, both sides seemed a little unsure of their ground. Shafiq did not take singles he would have gone for the night before, while Smith’s fields were notably defensive, often sparing only one slip in a match where catches in the cordon have been comfortably the main mode of dismissal.After the first few overs passed without incident, Shafiq and Yasir grew in confidence, doubtless aided by a vocal contingent of Pakistan supporters who made their presence felt in an otherwise deserted stadium. Shafiq was able to find numerous off-side gaps, while Yasir married impressive defence with the occasional flourish, including an upper cut over the slips and later a handsome flick over midwicket off Jackson Bird.At length Smith brought Nathan Lyon into the attack, but the spinner was unable to find enough consistency to trouble either batsman – even if Matthew Wade appealed for a stumping from a straighter ball that Yasir played inside. Lyon soon found himself relieved of duty.As the runs ticked down the tenseness on Australian faces was acute. Several near misses took place: Yasir square drove in the air a millimetre out of the reach of a diving Lyon; he was given out lbw to Hazlewood padding up, but on review was reprieved by the bounce. Next Yasir appeared to get the slightest of touches when glancing Starc, but Wade could not hang on and any appeal was strangled.Only 41 runs were required when Starc finally found the delivery to break the stand, a throat ball that Shafiq could only throw his bat at, resulting in a skier that David Warner was able to cling onto at gully. Rahat Ali took a single first ball, but Yasir’s composure was clearly at an end when he swung wildly at the next one.Next ball Yasir dug out a Starc yorker but ventured out of his crease long enough for Smith to throw the stumps down from slips and begin relieved celebrations for a team that went from dominators to nervous wrecks over the course of Shafiq’s wondrous innings.