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The Hobart Hurricanes will open their Champions League T20 2014 campaign when they take on the Kings XI Punjab at Mohali on Thursday and you can follow the live blog of this T20 starting at 12.30am AEST.
It will be the first time that the Hurricanes take field in a Champions League T20 game, having earned the right by finishing runner-up last Big Bash League. And they will be up against a side which is in similar territory as them.
Not only are the Kings XI Punjab being led by an Aussie, George Bailey, but they will also be making their CLT20 debut. Coincidentally, they finished runner-up in the IPL earlier this year, having only earlier even made the semi-finals.
Led by Tim Paine, the Hurricanes hardly looked like a team to reckon in the early bit of the Big Bash League last season. After seven games, they had won just two matches and lost four of the remaining with one ending abandoned.
Fortunately for them, the fourth semi-final berth was still open and needing to win against the defending champion Brisbane Heat in their last league game, they came up with one of their best performances of the season.
Led by man-of-the-tournament Ben Dunk’s 87, and captain Paine’s 47, the Hurricanes amassed 209 in their 20 and in a virtual quarter-final that it had become, it proved to be 40 runs too many for the Heat.
Controversy followed the stand-in captain Paine before their semi-final when the Melbourne Stars President Eddie McGuire took exception to some of the comments he had made relating to the salary cap and threatened legal action. Paine was forced to apologise but he had the last laugh when the Hurricanes waltzed past the Stars in their semi-finals to make the title-decider.
Interestingly, in that semi-final, it was the current Punjab captain Bailey who led the Hurricanes, as he did in the final as well. Now, he will have a fair idea of the strengths and weaknesses of his ‘home’ team, something that he can use to exploit for the Kings XI Punjab.
Punjab will also be bolstered by the presence of Virender Sehwag at the top of the order and Glenn Maxwell and David Miller in the middle.
However, the Kings XI will be wary of the way Maxwell and Miller have gone in recent times. Maxwell had a very poor series in Zimbabwe as did Miller struggled in that very series.
To top is, Bailey’s batting has regressed since his excellent tour of India last year while Sehwag has himself not played too much since the IPL. Can this rusty Punjab line-up get the better of the Hurricanes?
Punjab have one other trouble. Mitchell Johnson, who had a reasonable IPL 2014 season with them following his Ashes exploits earlier in the season, is missing. He has an injury he is nursing and will miss at least the first couple of games.
Home advantage should have made Punjab favourite but the loss of their key bowler and the form issues for the rest of them even things out here. Expect a tough one on what could be a rather flat track at the PCA Stadium in Mohali.
Join me for this Champions League T20 2014 game between the Hobart Hurricanes and Kings XI Punjab on Thursday here and you can follow the live score of this game from 12.30am and post your comments below.
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