Weatherald smashes final records in Big Bash win

Adelaide Strikers won the seventh Big Bash League on the back of the highest innings ever played in a final, 115 off 70 balls by Jake Weatherald, who also hit eight sixes, the most in a BBL final. They defeated Hobart Hurricanes to win their first title by 25 runs.

Weatherald, the left-handed 23-year-old, took apart all the Hurricanes bowlers, especially their overseas player Jofra Archer, who looked far from fully fit and bowled his four overs for 46 runs. The Hurricanes’ bowling was far too short and was hit to and over the square boundaries at Adelaide Oval, whereas the Strikers’ bowlers kept a fuller length and produced plenty of yorkers, especially Australia’s former Test player, Peter Siddle, who took three for 17, as only D’arcy Short, with 68 off 44 balls, threatened to knock off the target of 203.

The Big Bash has proved valuable to Australia in not only attracting a new audience of women and children, but in fast-tracking talent. There are only six state teams that play first-class cricket but eight BBL franchises, and they are allowed no more than two overseas players (the Hurricanes omitted England’s Tymal Mills). Hence they have to bring in young Australians from the fringes like Short and Weatherald.

Short had already become the first batsman to score 500 runs in a BBL season before his runs in the final. He was picked up by the Hurricanes after six first-class matches for Western Australia and progressed so rapidly in the last two months that he was selected as an opener for Australia in their T20 victory over New Zealand in the tri-series, and is expected to play again against England in Hobart on Wednesday.

In the women’s final staged before the men’s, Sydney Sixers won their second successive title with an emphatic nine-wicket victory over Perth Scorchers. The former Australia opening bowler Sarah Coyte, who retired from the game last year suffering from a stress-related illness, crowned her triumphant comeback with three for 17 to help bowl Scorchers out for 99, a total Sixers surpassed with 30 balls to spare for the loss of top-scorer Alyssa Healy for 41.