While the reigning champions Southern Brave suffered their second straight loss, the London Spirit were able to extend their winning streak to three games in a row thanks to an excellent bowling performance across the board that was led by Jordan Thompson (2 for 32). After dragging Spirit to 147 for 6, Glenn Maxwell, Daniel Bell-Drummond, and Kieron Pollard made small but crucial contributions with the bat. After that, the bowlers grabbed centre stage to construct a successful defence of the total.
James Vince was bowled on the very first ball of the chase, which allowed Maxwell to get off to the best possible start in this endeavour. As a result of a miscommunication between Quinton de Kock and Alex Davies regarding a call for a run, both players were left stranded in the middle of the pitch. This resulted in the dismissal of Quinton de Kock with only four runs on the board. It was an absolutely horrible start for Brave.
Davies endeavoured to make amends for his wrongdoing by taking Marcus Stoinis’s company while he tried to maintain his composure. They accumulated 40 runs while facing 24 balls until Stoinis gave Liam Dawson the charge and was stumped for a score of 14 off 10 balls. Another partnership was formed, this time between Davies and Ross Whiteley, but the bowlers once again did well to ensure that they did not move entirely ahead of the field in the chase.
This turned out to be a reoccurring theme throughout the evening as Spirit kept clawing its way back by picking up wickets at regular intervals. After the fourth-wicket partnership had progressed for 31 runs, Davies smashed a straight shot from Mason Crane to long off.
Another notable partnership, this time between Whiteley and James Fuller for the sixth wicket, was worth 41 runs; however, it was not enough to carry the team beyond the finishing line. With a piercing yorker, Thompson put a stop to those ideas by bringing Whiteley’s batting over to an end at the score of 52 off 33 balls. After that wicket, they needed to get 27 runs off the remaining 10 balls in the game.
Nathan Ellis, who did not take a wicket throughout the match, bowled effectively given the conditions to allow only eight runs in five deliveries, which meant that Brave needed to score 19 runs off of the remaining five balls. That was reduced to 12 runs off 3, but on the very next delivery, Fuller took a wicket, which effectively put an end to the chase.
Earlier on, Spirit also got off to a shaky start, and this was despite Maxwell’s blazing entrance into the middle of the pack. On his way to scoring 34 off 21, he had five fours and a six, but James Fuller was able to get rid of him before the halfway point. When Bell-Drummond and Pollard commenced their innings-turning stand, the Spirit were in a precarious position with a score of 70 for 4.
Before Bell-Drummond was run out for 46 off 33 balls, the pair contributed 53 runs off 33 to the scoreboard for the fifth wicket. As the Spirit team tried to go as near to 150 as they could before handing the baton over to the bowlers, Pollard concluded his innings with an unbeaten 26 off of 20.
The brief scores are as follows: London Spirit 147/6 in 100 balls (Daniel Bell-Drummond 46, Glenn Maxwell 34; Michael Hogan 2-31) prevailed against Southern Brave 138/7 in 100 balls (Ross Whiteley 52, Alex Davies 36; Jordan Thompson 2-32) by a margin of 9 runs.
