Going into the first game of MLC\u2019s July 4th double header, all 6 teams in the table were tied on 3 wins a piece. Only net run rate separated San Francisco Unicorns at the top of the table from Washington Freedom, who\u2019s net run rate had them squarely rooted to the bottom in part to the pasting the Unicorns put on the Freedom 6 days ago.<\/p>\n
On the 2nd Pomona, California wicket in use this weekend Steve Smith would use lessons learned Wednesday night by playing an almost identical match from Wednesday night to see Washington Freedom defeat San Francisco Unicorns by 5 wickets.<\/p>\n
The San Francisco Unicorn power play was humming along until the 5th ball of the 3rd over when Ben Dwarshuis would surprisingly end the innings of Lhuan-dre Pretorius, a line drive against the wind right to Jack Edwards. Matthew Short and Finn Allen would look to get the Unicorns back on track, a task derailed in a disastrous sixth over. <\/p>\n
Jack Edwards would bowl teasing ball after teasing ball, first getting Finn Allen (12) with the opening ball of the 6th, Saurabh Netravalkar waiting at 3rd man to make the easy catch. Aaron Hardie would open his spell with a 4 before being the next victim at third man, this time Steve Smith making the catch. Sanjay Krishnamurthi would come in and on the last ball of the power play edging off the bat right to Andries Gous. From 41-1 the power play would end 45-4.<\/p>\n
Once Hammad Khan went in the 9th over for 6, the innings would depend on Matthew Short and Hammad Azam. It would take 45 deliveries for the pair to get a 50 partnership, the pair being overly cautious on the fresh wicket. The 6th wicket partnership would end on 63 to start the 17th over, Matthew Short (39) hitting to Mitchell Owen who made a regulation catch. Once that wicket fell, no partnership went for more than 10 as Jack Edwards would get his 4th wicket to close proceedings, his 4-13 reducing San Francisco Unicorns to 126 all out.<\/p>\n
In a strange move the Washington Freedom would open with Mitchell Owen and Jack Edwards at the crease. They would be gone within 7 deliveries. Xavier Bartlett would get revenge on Owen bowling him off stump in the 1st over while Haris Rauf would get Edwards to pop the ball into the air, Krishnamurthi beating 2 other Unicorns to the ball. Steve Smith would enter at this point and see Andries Gous bowled by Brody Couch in the 5th, Mark Chapman coming in to try and salvage an innings that looked to be falling apart fast.<\/p>\n
But this is Steve Smith we\u2019re talking about. On a wicket that was almost identical to the wicket on Wednesday, Smith and Chapman would take the next 3 over bedding in. Taking no risks, the pair would be comfortable with conditions by the 10th over, the pair going for 24 between the over before and after drinks. The partnership would reach 70 come the 13th over, the over being significant as it would be the first over the run rate would get below a run a ball.<\/p>\n
Mark Chapman would go in the 14th over, an attempted six against a slight breeze caught by Hassan Khan. His 44 from 33 deliveries was above the run rate of Steve Smith, who allowed Nikhil Chaudhary to bed in himself. In the 32 run partnership for the 5th wicket, Steve Smith would pick up a half century in the 18th over before going trying to end the contest to Finn Allen, his 56 from 49 deliveries proof positive that lessons learned on Wednesday came into play on Saturday. The run rate may not have increased much, but they\u2019ll be more than happy with a 4th victory on the campaign. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Going into the first game of MLC\u2019s July 4th double header, all 6 teams in the table were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-386569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}