Hurricanes’ house of pain

Christian wants Big Bash rivals to fear Launceston stadium

THE Hobart Hurricanes are hoping to turn Launceston’s UTas Stadium into a fortress, starting against the Sydney Thunder this weekend, allrounder Dan Christian says.

Saturday’s game will be the first BBL match played at UTas Stadium, and Christian hopes the Hurricanes can take advantage of some parochial support.

“There’s been really good ticket sales and they’re expect- ing a fair few to turn up, so hopefully we can get a nice big crowd and try and make that home ground a bit of a fortress for us,” he said.

“[We’re] looking forward to it, there’s a couple of younger guys who played a practice match there not that long ago and they said it was a pretty good wicket, it was pretty quick and had nice good bounce.

“It’s a bit of an unknown, we’ll just have to wait and see.”

The Hurricanes lost to the Melbourne Renegades by seven wickets in their opening Big Bash League game of the season at Blundstone Arena last week.

Speaking before an intraclub practice match yesterday, Christian said the Hurricanes were well rested after the Christmas break and ready to bounce back from the first-up loss.

“A couple of days off has been nice, it’s been a pretty hectic season so far with the one-dayers and then the Shef- field Shield stuff, and then straight into preparation for the Big Bash,” he said. “To get back and spend some time with the family has been good fun.”

The Thunder won its season opener against cross-town rivals Sydney Sixers in a thriller, before being thumped by 53 runs by the Adelaide Strikers in its second match.

Christian kept a close eye on both games.

“Obviously Shane Watson was fairly prominent in that first game, he played really well and pretty much got them over the line. They sort of stumbled over the line once he got out,” he said.

“Their second game they were just unable to get that partnership, but they’ve got two really good spinners, Fawad Ahmed and Arjun Nair, and then [Chris] Green up front as well, and they’re pretty solid all the way through.

“That’s the beauty of this competition, there’s no real weak teams, everyone’s pretty good on paper.”