From Cellar Dwellers to Champions: Renegades Claim WBBL|10 Title
The Melbourne Renegades won their first WBBL crown in a tight contest against the Brisbane Heat.
IMAGE: The Melbourne Renegades celebrate with the WBBL trophy after their victory over the Brisbane Heat.
The Melbourne Renegades won the WBBL|10 Final yesterday, defeating the Brisbane Heat by seven runs in a rain-affected game at the MCG.
The Heat’s Jess Jonassen won the toss and elected to field and would have been feeling pretty good about that decision when Brisbane had the Renegades at 3/23 at the start of the fifth over after Deandra Dottin was run out without facing a ball.
But it didn’t take long after that for Renegades import Hayley Matthews, who had opened the batting, to get into the swing of things, hitting eight fours on her way to 69 off 61 runs – the highest score in a WBBL final – to ensure the Renegades finished at a respectable 9/141 after their 20 overs.
The Heat started their innings equally poorly, losing two quick wickets to be 2/11 when the rain came in during the fourth over. Eight overs of play were lost to the weather, with the revised DLS target set at 98 of 12 overs.
But no Heat batter outside skipper Jonassen (44* off 28, including a six off the last ball of the innings) really made an impact, with five players failing to make double figures as the Heat finished their shortened innings at 6/90.
West Indian skipper Matthews also performed well with the ball, taking 2-24 from her three overs of off-spin and removing Charli Knott (seven off 10) and Laura Harris (0 off 1) in consecutive deliveries in the seventh over.
Last month I explored some of the player moves that had the potential to shape the WBBL|10 season based on what teams had gained and lost from a run-scoring and wicket-taking perspective, so let’s look back and see if any of my thoughts were remotely close to what actually happened.
The Renegades were the ultimate surprise packet this season, going from finishing at the bottom of the ladder last year (with two wins) to top of the table after the regular season.
Harmanpreet Kaur, Jess Duffin, and Tammy Beaumont – who each have at least 1000 WBBL runs to their name – moved on from the Renegades ahead of WBBL|10, along with Ellen Falconer, Erica Kershaw, and Rhiann O'Donnell.
But the Renegades poached three players from their crosstown rivals (Nicole Faltum, Milly Illinworth, and English all-rounder Alice Capsey), who all made meaningful contributions throughout the season.
Skipper Sophie Molineux was their leading wicket taker (16 in seven matches, including 1/22 in the final), but got plenty of support from Matthews (14), Capsey (13 from eight), Georgia Wareham (11 from 11), and Deandra Dottin (10 from 11).
Matthews topped the run-scoring list, finishing with 324, ahead of Courtney Webb (258) and Wareham (227).
Although they fell short of the title for the second consecutive year, the Brisbane Heat didn’t seem too bothered by losing Mignon du Preez, Georgia Voll, Amelia Kerr, and Courtney Sippel, winning seven of 10 to finish second on the table on net run rate to the Renegades.
Grace Harris (277 runs), Indian draft selection Jemimah Rodrigues (267), and Georgia Redmayne (228) were the best performing batters over the course of the season, but only managed 17 runs between them in final when it mattered most.
Veteran spinner Jonassen performed strongly with the ball, taking 17 wickets across the campaign (the third-highest return in the league), with Lucy Hamilton, Grace Parsons, Shikha Pandey, and Nicola Hancock all taking 12 wickets each from their games.
In the lead up to the season I suggested that the Melbourne Stars could be big improvers in WBBL|10 after finishing seventh in WBBL|09, recruiting Deepti Sharma, Marizanne Kapp, Yastika Bhatia, Maisy Gibson, Hasrat Gill, and Ines McKeon to play alongside last season’s leading wicket-taker Sophie Day.
However, the Stars had an absolute stinker of a season, winning just two of their 10 games and finishing at the bottom of the table before firing coach Jonathan Batty. The Stars failed to finish higher than sixth in Batty’s three seasons at the helm.
The Stars’ season wasn’t helped by their three international signings failing to fire. Keeper-batter Bhatia scored 154 runs across six matches (a 57 against the Hobart Hurricanes on November 3 was her best innings), Indian all-rounder Sharma scored 65 runs (with a high score of 23 against the Renegades on November 9) and took two wickets across seven matches, while South African all-rounder Kapp – who played in all nine of the Stars’ matches, scored 103 runs (including a best of 32 against the Renegades on November 15) and took nine wickets in her tenth WBBL campaign.
The Adelaide Strikers, who entered this season as back-to-back champions, also struggled, winning three games for the season. Returning Indian batter Smriti Mandhana, who last played in the WBBL for the Sydney Thunder back in 2021, had a modest season with 144 runs across five matches.
Yet despite only playing half of the season, Mandhana was still the sixth-leading run scorer for the Strikers, behind Talia McGrath (222 runs in nine matches), Katie Mack (196 runs, nine matches), Laura Wolvaardt (193 runs, nine matches), Madeline Penna (170 runs, nine matches), and Bridget Patterson (168 runs, seven matches).
The Hobart Hurricanes strengthened their batting stocks ahead of this season by signing Suzie Bates and Danni Wyatt-Hodge – both of whom have scored over 1200 runs in the WBBL.
But it was South African keeper-batter Lizelle Lee, the ‘Canes overseas pre-signing, who stole the show this season with 399 runs across 11 innings, including back-to-back centuries against the Perth Scorchers and the Adelaide Strikers in mid-November.
Lee’s 150* against the Scorchers is now the highest individual score in WBBL history, beating Grace Harris’ 136* for the Heat against the Scorchers last season.
It was a scratchy season for Lee outside of those two games, however, with scores of 18, 38, 4, 4, 8, 0, 44, and 23 seeing the South African finish second on the run-scoring list behind Australian superstar Ellyse Perry, who scored 424 runs in her ten matches this season.
The Hurricanes finished fourth on the table before being defeated in the Knockout by the Sydney Thunder.
The Australian domestic T20 scene now takes a short breather before the 14th season of the men’s Big Bash League kicks off on December 15, with the Perth Scorchers hosting the Melbourne Stars.