CLICK HERE!<\/a><\/p>\nMATCH PREVIEW<\/p>\n
The excitement machine that is Sam Konstas and his Sydney Thunder teammates will kick off their 2025-2026 BBL campaign with a grand final rematch against the Hobart Hurricanes.<\/p>\n
The Thunder will be keen to atone for the seven wicket defeat in last year\u2019s decider to the Hurricanes. <\/p>\n
In a big blow for Sydney, captain David Warner is out, but is expected to be back on deck for Saturday\u2019s Sydney Smash against the Sixers. Chris Green will captain the Thunder tonight.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s obviously not ideal to not have Davey but we\u2019d rather be careful earlier in the tournament. I\u2019m confident he\u2019ll be right for our biggest game of the year on Saturday,\u201d Thunder general manager Trent Copeland said. <\/p>\n
The Thunder will still pack a punch at the top of the order with Konstas, who burst onto the Australian cricketing scene 12 months ago.<\/p>\n
Konstas scored a dazzling 50 in his BBL debut last summer almost a year ago to the day.<\/p>\n
The young gun comes here in good form having just hit a century against Queensland in a Sheffield Shield match.<\/p>\n
Hobart will be out to start their title defence on the right note and not only replicate last season, but replicate the deeds of the women\u2019s side, who lifted the WBBL11 trophy over the weekend.<\/p>\n
The first ball is set to be bowled at 7:15 AEDT. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sydney Thunder are in the box seat at the halfway mark, setting the Hobart Hurricanes a score…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[3443,64,63,689,193329,189226,740,18754,11288,133419,673,677,60180,17069,1124,85,193330,670,109024,38445,189234,193331],"class_list":["post-351505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-adelaide","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-australian-cricketing-scene","tag-chris-green","tag-cricket","tag-david-warner","tag-grand-final","tag-hobart-hurricanes","tag-new-south-wales","tag-oceania","tag-perth-scorchers","tag-sam-konstas","tag-south-australia","tag-sports","tag-star-batsmen","tag-sydney","tag-sydney-thunder","tag-title-defence","tag-trent-copeland","tag-wicket-defeat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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