Photo Credit: Sydney Thunder
Thunder squad announced from coach Trevor Bayliss for Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium against the Renegades Sunday 18th December.
Sydney Thunder coach Trevor Bayliss described it as a “good thing” his team is playing against Melbourne Renegades tomorrow night because it will help his players to ‘move on’ from Friday night’s humiliating KFC Big Bash League defeat to Adelaide Strikers.
Thunder’s innings lasted only 35 balls as the Strikers bundled them out for 15 – the lowest ever total recorded in elite T20 cricket.
Bayliss, who guided England to Ashes and World Cup victories, said the players needed to go out against the Renegades determined to “right the wrong”.
“It’s got to make them more determined,” said Bayliss of the result. “You need to go into the next game determined to right the wrong. If we go into the next game thinking about what happened out there it’s going to take longer to get out of it.
“They’re all very good players who have scored plenty of runs in the past. It won’t be easy, but someone has got to go out [against Renegades] and lead the way. We have very good players – top quality internationals and others who scored plenty of runs last year.
“The talent is there … we need to put tonight down to ‘one of those things’. Adelaide took two very good catches to start with and we looked a bit tentative after that.
“I’m not saying it’s easy, but you’ve got to go out there [in situations such as the Adelaide match] with the intent of making good decisions; [employ] footwork that’s nice and crisp. It looked to me as if we were stuck on the crease and poking at the ball.”
Bayliss paid tribute to Adelaide by acknowledging their tremendous effort in the field before throwing forward to Sunday’s match against the Melbourne Renegades at Marvel Stadium.
“Adelaide obviously bowled very well, and they caught spectacularly” said Bayliss.
“Thankfully we have a game on Sunday, so that means our players won’t sit around and think about what happened – they can right the wrong.
“The Renegades have some good players, and what we’ve seen from the start of this season is each of the eight teams can beat the others.
“[Renegades] played well in their first game – it won’t be an easy match – but I should add how well we’ve bowled in our first two games, and we played well for 50 percent of tonight’s game. Thunder has too many good players – too many good batters – not to score runs.”
Bayliss said Thunder could take heart from the 1993 NSW Sheffield team that was ingloriously rolled by Western Australia in Perth.
“I was dropped for this particular game, but NSW played Western Australia in Perth and they were beaten badly,” he said. “[Chasing 503 runs they were dismissed for 73 and 177] opener Richard Chee Quee batted twice in the one day, and, as you’d expect, the team was heavily criticised.
“However, NSW moved on from that game and they won the Shield that season.
“The point I’m making is [Sydney Thunder’s] players need to take it on the chin. The teams that move on are the ones that learn from these situations. And I’m confident that will happen here because the players in this squad do listen; they do learn. I’ve got no concerns about that.
“We’ve played two games, won one and lost the other. There’s still a long way to go.”
Sydney Thunder squad v Melbourne Renegades
Ben Cutting, Oliver Davies, Brendan Doggett, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Matthew Gilkes, Toby Gray, Chris Green (vc), Alex Hales, Baxter Holt, Nathan McAndrew, Alex Ross, Rilee Rossouw, Daniel Sams, Gurinder Sandhu, Jason Sangha (c).
Thunder play Melbourne Renegades at 7.15pm (AEDT) at Marvel Stadium on Sunday, 18 December.
