Wayne’s Preview – Scorchers v Thunder

Posted on January 10, 2018June 7, 2018 | Posted by Wayne Clark

The Scorchers have been in red-hot form in the first half of the series, despite the unavailability of key players due to injury and test duties, but their stocks are going to be further tested with Tye, Richardson and Willey all leaving for the ODI’s.  Bancroft comes in to cover Willey at the top of the batting and Tim Bresnan returns to bolster the bowling stocks – can he fill the massive void left by the competitions leading wicket taker in Tye, though?

Mitchell Johnson and Joel Paris will still provide strike power early and Ashton Agar, though only taking 2 wickets, has bowled extremely well (Econ. Rate 5.63) and will again be very effective on the Spotless Stadium pitch.

The Thunders batting line-up up has 3 batsmen in the competitions top 10 runs-scorers; Watson (236), Patterson (168), however there has been little support from the others.  If Khawaja plays he will strengthen an underperforming batting line-up.  In comparison, there has been a more widespread balance in the Scorchers batting with 6 players with 100+ runs and Bancrofts’ return will reinforce this even more.

The Thunder have 3 players in the top 10 wicket-takers (McClenaghan, Ahmed, Nair – 8 wickets each), but as with their batting, there hasn’t been the depth to maintain the pressure necessary to, so-far, win enough games.

In what could be a danger game for the Scorchers and where the betting might not reflect how close this game could be, I’m leaning slightly in favour of the Scorchers.

	Winner	Most Wickets	Most Runs
Scorchers	Scorchers	Paris	Cartwright
Thunder		McClenaghan	Watson