LIVE - Round 1 - Vipers v Ravens at Snake Pit

Rarely has tailend batting played such a huge part in a victory.

We lost by 168 runs which is huge, but if you just took the first seven wickets of each innings into consideration (Vipers 271 & 201; Ravens 284 & 241), we would have won comfortably. The Vipers' last three wickets combined in each innings produced 240 runs while the Ravens' produced just 20. That's massive.

I'm not trying to make excuses here as lower order batting is an important part of the game, but it's weird that it made such a huge difference. I actually think it had more to do with the respective bowling attacks than the batting proficiency of the tails - the Vipers have a lot more experience and depth in their bowling attack than we do.. after we'd got into good positions our frontliners got tired as we were using James and Chung who have both played very little BS cricket and Shririam who was an allrounder bowling on a surface completely unsuited to him. The Vipers just had PC bowler after PC bowler to turn to so they were all still fresh and able to run through our tail.

Not a bad start against the team I consider to be the best in the comp, particularly at their own home ground, but it's still a frustrating loss.

 

Ravens... Allstars.. same thing really. Both teams have Alec and Rusty.

 

You made your debut in Season 7, so the Allstars never had Bedsey or Manero when you were with them.