Last season’s game was overshadowed by controversy with a power failure robbing the Thunder of an almost certain victory.

This win against the Heat, to start their BBL09 off on a winning note, will be some compensation. 

For Darren Lehmann, he will need to examine the aggressive batting strategy for Friday’s match against the Stars. Although the Thunder were not wholly convincing, they have shown enough to suggest that they are going to be competitive.

Sydney won the toss and decided to bowl first. It could have been a fast start for the home team when a bits and pieces of a first over, from Josh Lalor, should have yielded a wicket when Usman Khawaja was trapped in front; the umpire was not convinced.

Lalor finally got his man when Khawaja’s errant shot found the safe hands of Sam Heazlett with the score on 24. It was just seven runs later when Khawaja’s fellow opener Alex Hales played an ill-advised shot and scooped the ball high into the air for Heazlett to take his second catch of the game, this time off the bowling of Mark Steketee.

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Disaster struck for the Thunder at the end of the fifth over when another batter tried to go the aerial route and perished. 

This time it was Matthew Gilkes who found, you guessed it, Heazlett in the deep for his third catch of the night. Gilkes went for five and left the Sydney side floundering at 3/38. The bowler was BBL record wicket-taker Ben Laughlin on his debut for Brisbane.

At the end of the seventh over, the Thunder called the first-ever strategic time out in the BBL.

The moment was predictably underwhelming as both teams convened on the outfield while everyone else tried to work out what the point of it was.

Thunder captain Callum Ferguson and Alex Ross, facing his old team for the first time, were faced with rebuilding the innings and did so. The spin of Mitchell Swepson and Zahir Khan was more to the Thunder batters liking.

The Heat bowlers were struggling to find wicket-taking balls or contain the runs as Ferguson and Ross looked to accelerate the score.

The partnership of 63 was broken when Ross’s reverse sweep was hit straight at Chris Lynn. Ross had added 30 runs at a time when his team needed it most.

Successful bowler Mitchell Swepson made it two wickets in two balls when Daniel Sams was comprehensively bowled. Chris Green kept out the hat-trick ball, but Swepson’s double strike had turned the game back towards the Heat at 5/101.

Needing to put in a captain’s innings, Ferguson obliged with a significant 73 not out from 44 balls. Along with Green, who was playing some agricultural carves into the Gabba outfield, the partnership pushed the Thunder towards a competitive total.

Green’s luck finally ran out when on 25 when Ben Cutting took a regulation caught and bowled chance.