The evening started with a Leeds crowd conflicted as they ‘welcomed’ the Fire opening pair to the crease – cheering Yorkshireman Bairstow before booing former Australia skipper Smith.<\/p>\n
But with Bairstow playing for the visitors, there was rather less enthusiasm when he began flaying the ball to all parts of a ground he knows so well.<\/p>\n
Smith was going well, too, on his Hundred debut and the two former Ashes foes looked to have Fire well on their way to a big total.<\/p>\n
However, when Smith was bowled for 29 trying to reverse scoop Potts, who had Wells caught behind the next ball, momentum began to shift.<\/p>\n
Bairstow kept going briefly before he was caught at long-on and the innings fell away.<\/p>\n
Superchargers made no such mistake. Crawley and Malan combined for four sixes to take the home side to 52-0 after the powerplay.<\/p>\n
Malan, dropped on 28, eventually fell to a Riley Meredith slower ball just past the halfway point of the chase and Michael Pepper was dismissed soon after.<\/p>\n
But Andrew Flintoff’s Superchargers remained in control – as emphasised by captain Harry Brook, who came in and clobbered his first ball high over extra cover for six.<\/p>\n
Fire could not fight back. Paul Walter put down Crawley shortly before he brought up his half-century from 29 balls and Saif Zaib grassed a skier off Brook when he was on 10.<\/p>\n
The Headingly crowd was lapping it up as Brook, who finished 23 not out, hit a couple more boundaries before Crawley finished the job with a trademark cover drive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The evening started with a Leeds crowd conflicted as they ‘welcomed’ the Fire opening pair to the crease…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-51657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}