MLC 2024: San Francisco Unicorns beat Seattle Orcas by 23 runs | Cricket News
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With this defeat, the Orcas remained at the bottom of the points table, while the Unicorns climbed to the third spot.
Winning the toss and asking the Unicorns to bat first, Cameron Gannon took 3 wickets for the Orcas as they restricted the Unicorns to 165/7 despite a 32-ball 56 by Matthew Short.
The Orcas, chasing 166, got off to a good start, scoring 54 runs at the end of the powerplay without losing a wicket. Shehan Jayasuriya launched an offensive against Pat Cummins and Haris Rauf, while Ryan Rickelton was a little inconsistent.
The game changed when Liam Plunkett was brought on after the powerplay, as the Englishman claimed two wickets.
In the middle overs, the Orcas went from 76/0 to 98/5 when Jayasuriya fell after reaching fifty and Klaasen fell cheaply.
With five overs remaining and needing to score more than ten per over, the Orcas attempted to do so through Harmeet Singh and Hammad Azam, but they were unable to consistently reach the boundaries as the Unicorn bowlers deftly slowed the tempo and unleashed a barrage of cutters.
In the end, the Corey Anderson-led side registered a comfortable win by 23 runs as the Orcas finished at 142/6 in their 20 overs.
After the game, player of the match Liam Plunkett said, “The way they batted in the powerplay, they got a decent start but it was always going to get tough when the ball got older. The plan was to try and maximise that phase.”
Orcas captain Heinrich Klaasen said, “We didn’t bat well once again. The bowlers have been fantastic so far, the batters are letting the bowlers down.”
On Jayasuriya, Klaasen said, “That’s the reason he’s back in the team. He can be explosive up front. I’m so pleased it came off for him today and hopefully it can continue for the rest of the tournament. The pitch got a lot more difficult than expected. They bowled well, specially Plunkett but then also there was a bit of tactical fault from our side. We could have controlled things better.”
Talking about the next game, Klaasen said, “Yeah, it would seem like a must win. The group is staggered nicely, so a win here can bump you up a couple of places. We want to go to Dallas with a win, and win there and hopefully get into the playoffs.”
Unicorns captain Corey Anderson said, “Pretty good result. The boys did a great job in the back end of the batting innings and then came out strong with the ball.”
On Sanjay Krishnamurthi, who scored a 21-ball 30, Anderson said, “He’s a young kid who’s got so much talent. Huge pluses for him today. It was a pretty big innings in the context of the game. 20 odd in a game like this is huge.”
Talking about Australia Test and ODI captain Pat Cummins, Anderson said, “He is a world class player, just having him in the group speaking cricket calms the group. Great for the balance of the team as well. We want to try and win every game, we go back to Dallas and we want to reassess quickly and hopefully we can get a bit of momentum out of this one.”
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