HURRICANES ’CAN DO IT’

STRIKERS WIN OTHER SEMI ... BUT CANES’ CONFIDENCE SOARS FOR FINAL

HOBART coach Gary Kirsten says his Hurricanes are good enough to go all the way and win the Big Bash final tomorrow.

Riding high after a crunching 71-run win over raging favourites Perth Scorchers in their semifinal at Optus Stadium on Thursday, the South African legend has ultimate faith in his men.

The Hurricanes will play the Adelaide Strikers after they beat the Melbourne Renegades by one run in a second semi-final thriller at Adelaide Oval last night.

“We’re on a mission,” Kirsten said. “We didn’t come here just to win the semi — we feel we’ve got a good enough team to go all the way. And we said that right at the beginning, so hopefully we can have another really good game of cricket.”

After a stellar run of five consecutive wins — a club record — the Hurricanes lost their last three games and fell into the finals after the Renegades beat Brisbane Heat to preserve a spot in the top four.

They were losses the Hurricanes had to have.

“Those losses were very important to our campaign,” Kirsten said.

“It helped us work out how we wanted to play, what the combinations were going to be and what our identity was going to be as a team.”

Kirsten admires the fighters in his batting line-up, which is now without the BBL’s highest ever scorer D’Arcy Short, lost to the Australian T20 squad. Matthew Wade stepped up as opener and then Ben McDermott and Dan Christian drove it home against Perth.

“We’ve had a lot of consistency in our batting unit,” Kirsten said.

“Our bowling unit, we’ve kind of chopped and changed a bit because we just haven’t been sure.

“When you win games of cricket you don’t do anything about it. When you lose you have to make decisions and it was really helpful to have those losses.

“We certainly didn’t want to lose to the Stars [in the last game] and wait for another team to help us get in — there was a bit of luck there. We didn’t bowl well in that game, we batted well.

“We’ve taken a lot of learn- ing out of that and made some quite big decisions, which I think has helped us.”

Kirsten does not plan to reinvent the wheel for the final.

“One thing we’ve really focused on is being consistent in our game plan and the way we want to play,” he said.

“It’s a big occasion. The semi was a big occasion and I think the guys will take a lot of confidence out of that performance.”