{"id":60101,"date":"2025-08-11T21:51:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T21:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/60101\/"},"modified":"2025-08-11T21:51:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-11T21:51:08","slug":"sonny-baker-shines-as-manchester-originals-beat-london-spirit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/60101\/","title":{"rendered":"Sonny Baker shines as Manchester Originals beat London Spirit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Captain Phil Salt compared 22-year-old fast bowler Sonny Baker to England great James Anderson after he shone in Manchester Originals&#8217; 10-run win over London Spirit at Old Trafford.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Baker began Spirit&#8217;s chase of 164 with five dots and conceded only four runs when asked to bowl the first 10 deliveries. He troubled two international greats in David Warner and Kane Williamson, who have a combined 38,000 international runs to their name, with swing and lively pace.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">That helped limit the Spirit&#8217;s scoring and, despite Australian Warner hitting 71, the hosts, who left out Anderson after defeats in their opening two games, were always in control.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Warner was caught down the leg side off England seamer Josh Tongue with 38 needed from 15 and Baker returned to dismiss Australia international Ashton Turner for 13 &#8211; a deserved reward for a fine spell that cost only 22 runs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;He was outstanding,&#8221; Salt told Sky Sports.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Jimmy had a rest today but that is the closest to what he did, if not better. It will be hard to pick seamers for the next match.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Anderson also praised the highly-rated Baker, who was awarded an England development contract earlier this year despite having never played a County Championship match at that stage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I have seen a lot of footage of Baker but not seen a lot of him live,&#8221; Anderson told Sky Sports. &#8220;I have been so impressed. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Tonight he bowled outstandingly well. He has got pace, skill, swings the ball both ways. He has a lot going for him.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Earlier another talented youngster, 20-year-old Durham batter Ben McKinney,  crashed three sixes in a 12-ball 29 on debut to give the hosts a fast start. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">From there, contributions of 31 from Phil Salt, 46 from Jos Buttler and 24 by Heinrich Klaasen helped the Originals post 163-6.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Captain Phil Salt compared 22-year-old fast bowler Sonny Baker to England great James Anderson after he shone in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-60101","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\/60101","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=60101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}