This year’s Big Bash League finals series promises to be one of the tightest of all time, with the remaining competition levelled from widespread pilfering by locally run international rebel tournaments.
Which team possesses the spare part-timers and decrepit semi-retirees to prevail over these pesky inconveniences?
Which captain will ultimately savour the sweet, sugary sensation of melted Zooper Doopers from the winner’s trophy while he breakdances like a penguin?
Which ones won’t?
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After enough regular scheduling to nearly sink my marriage, I’m tremendously agitated to reach the tournament’s outcome. This is not only to discover who Perth plays in the final this year, but to also to reconcile with my lady friend.
How will it end? Will it be another sad bridesmaid tale? Or a heartwarming Cinderella triumph? And what will happen in the cricket?
Here’s one wholly unhelpful guide to what awaits, free-of-charge, totally fumigated and complete with all of the insider knowledge only available exclusively on the internet. Keep it handy throughout, you know, just in case you need to squash a blowfly.
Semi-final 1: Adelaide Strikers vs Sydney Thunder
Venue: Adelaide Oval, South Australia. For first-time visitors looking for directions, it’s the only oval ground in this rugby-mad state.
Start time: 7:40pm EDST, which in local time is 7:10pm, 1942.
Form: The two teams couldn’t be further apart. The Thunder have ominously ransacked their way into their maiden finals campaign thanks to one straight win against the bottom-placed side, while the Adelaide Strikers are declining after losing one of their last eight matches. Like this summary of both team’s form, this game is moronically mismatched.
Previous meeting this season: December 28, 2015 at Spotless Stadium. The Thunder romped through the Strikers’ rank target of 117 for the loss of only three wickets. But be aware, this game feels like so long ago that my memory is recalling Jacques Kallis without a muffin-top.
Strikers key players
Travis Head: There’s only one way to keep this weapon out of the game when he’s batting, and that’s by making him chase his own ball. But even if he’s suffering willow inadequacies, Head can also sickeningly compensate by chipping in with wickets.
In summary, he’s 22 years old, captains his state and has the world at his feet, whereas I can’t afford a toothbrush. It makes me sick. I’m glad the Chartreuse had taken hold of my central nervous system on New Years Eve when he went all folklorish. Still, he’s bloody handy for Adelaide.
Adil Rashid: The Englishman is a ripper in every sense of the word. He rips his leggies, he rips through middle orders and he probably rips open envelopes without even using a letter opener. The bloke has no fear.
In addition, his wrong’un is downright cruel and really should be reported to some kind of authority. If you’re human, you’ll call someone right now. I expect the incessantly moribund middle overs of the game to be dominated by him and Channel Ten cross promotions.
Thunder key players
Michael Hussey: Never mind that he clearly doesn’t want to continue and owes us all nothing anyway, I plead with Mr Cricket to cancel his retirement forthwith, preferably for eternity. Why would you want to leave the game to spend time at home with family when you’re collecting runs in your swansong in blocks of 55.40 at 135.12?
Family comes and goes, Michael. By making a vital life decision in favour of yourself and your loved ones, you’re only hurting yourself. I’m confident you will be compelled to renege by your own critical innings of distilled gentility in this semi-final.
Clint McKay: With that freakin’ permed abomination on his melon, he may look like Andie MacDowell, but he certainly doesn’t bowl like her. (This is because she was a left-armer.) When McKay isn’t being frogmarched out of bowling alleys for inappropriate lane use, he spends his spare time gleefully shoving humble pie down the food-holes of our egg-covered faces.
How did we ever doubt this guy as a force in short-form cricket? Maybe because he had a patch where he was hugely ineffective, but let’s not get technical. With 14 wickets at 13.57 this tournament, there’s a great chance he’ll be selected for this game.
Result: The Big Bash hates norm core, so it will throw up something bizarre here. No I’m a Celebrity speculation until the end of the power play, and a Thunder win thanks to some Shane Watson heroics. He’ll run three on the last ball to win – and not detonate a hamstring.
Semi-final 2: Melbourne Stars vs Perth Scorchers
Venue: The MCG. A venue in perfect proximity to the tennis, thus allowing their shady underground figures a short walk to attend as pitch-siders.
Tickets: Barring half of Perth embarking on a mass pilgrimage for an impromptu AFL grand final or a mass extradition for a group court appearance, I can’t see the ‘full house’ sign going up. Queueing up will be fine, provided you arrive at lunchtime yesterday.
Form: Two of the most successful franchises in Big Bash history meeting in sudden-death would theoretically seem a tantalising match-up. However, when it comes to the numbers, Perth are all over the Stars like a dodgy outbreak.
They’ve won three of their four games in finals against the green team from Melbourne, but really, the joke is on them because Melbourne always lose semi-finals anyway. Checkmate, Stars.
Previous meeting this season: January 16, 2016 at the WACA. The Stars’ 9-146 from 20 overs defeated the Scorchers’ 94 all out. The defending champion’s trademark of defending a small total backfires badly when they set a minuscule target and do so when batting second.
Stars key players
Kevin Pietersen: Not only can he win matches, he has also thrown down the gauntlet to Andrew Flintoff for the title of this summer’s ‘Mr Ubiquitous’ I even saw him in Westfield the other day, three minutes after he posted a Facebook check-in from a Nando’s in Belgrade.
Rumour has it that he will be granted leave from his current role in excitable commentary to take up his position in the Stars line-up for this semi-final. What a coup for the hosts.
Adam Zampa: The beauty of the Stars unit is its spread of wicket-taking and lack of Scott Boland. Everyone plays their role, whether it’s Michael Beer as the valuable tightarse, Ben Hilfenhaus as the juicy fruit dispenser, or John Hastings with the absenteeism.
However, none of them can wow us with the sexual art of leggies like Zampa. The babyfaced spinner has fully recovered from his amateur rhinoplasty and still looks like he belongs on the cover of TV Hits. He could win a BBL MVP title before he’s even had his first shave.
Scorchers key players
Adam Voges: Scorned like a mistreated ex-lover who can’t get a game for Australia, Michael Klinger promises to arrest his uncharacteristic form trot in Friday’s semi-final. Well, I reckon that’s would he would probably say if you could peel him off the psychiatrist’s couch right now.
By his standards, he is so mind-stunningly out of form right now that he would ask Jim Higgs to protect him from the strike. Luckily, the Scorchers have a bona fide carrier in the team for passengers of his ilk, and that’s Voges, the man recently crowned president of the West Indies by sheer weight of runs.
Andrew Tye: He’s been wedging Kookaburras beneath the toes of batsmen with the precision and regularity of a teenager urgently hiding porn under a bed. What other type of analogy would you need when approaching a pressure final?
Tye’s long-term consistency in domestic competition has put him in the same category as guys like Chadd Sayers and Jackson Bird, and he’ll probably enjoy similar treatment. After he plays a telling hand in the Scorchers’ finals tilt, look to him to wear the fluoro bib with distinction when he’s benched for the entirety of the upcoming T20 series against India.
Result: Eddie McGuire’s decision to spear Cameron White will backfire when the Stars desperately lack late-innings power-hitting and antique leggies, thus sending the Scorchers to yet another KFC BBL final. Their sustained dominance then results in The Colonel changing the name of ‘Hot and Spicy’.
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