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.

At the other end, Ferguson carried on his belligerence. Lalor could only watch as the ball sailed high into the stands before Ferguson repeated the feat later in the 19th over. In the final over, Ferguson could only find the boundary once, and Sydney Thunder ended their innings on 6/172. 

Tom Banton and Max Bryant opened for Brisbane, with the Englishman taking two sighters before launching Daniel Sams for successive sixes. The result was 17 coming from the first over. However, Banton was soon walking back, when mistiming a shot off Jono Cook, for 16 from seven balls.

Heat continued to pursue an aggressive approach which was not unexpected with Bryant and Lynn at the wicket. And, not unexpected either, Bryant was caught on the boundary soon after to leave Brisbane 2/30. Cook was once again the bowler as the Thunder looked to exert pressure on the home side.

Lynn is a one-dimensional player – and what an aggressive, exciting, crowd-pleasing dimension that is when it works. His brief cameo lasted only nine runs but was enough to see him overtake  Michael Klinger's 1947 runs to become the all-time highest run scorer in BBL on 1954 runs.

However, carving Chris Tremain straight to Ferguson was not what the Heat required.

The fall of the captain brought Heazlett to the wicket to join Matthew Renshaw. At 3/40, the Heat needed a partnership to keep pace with the asking rate.

Renshaw and Heazlett adopted a less expansive approach, while Thunder employed Green and Arjun Nair to stifle the Heat batters. 

The introduction of Nathan McAndrew did little to encourage Renshaw and Heazlett to up their run rate. When Heazlett did try, his first shot in anger found Hales at long on to leave the Heat languishing on 4/67 in the tenth over.

Renshaw followed soon after when he hit Green’s low full toss straight to McAndrew at deep square leg for 26. It should have been far worse later in the same over but an awful throw from the covers, to Green, prevented the spinner from running out Ben Cutting with the batter in no man’s land.

In the 13th over, Brisbane caught a stroke of luck when McAndrew’s heel was judged to have touched the boundary before juggling Mark Steketee’s agricultural heave towards deep midwicket. It was unfortunate as McAndrew’s fielding arguably deserved more. However, there was an ever-growing feeling of futility to that batters’ attempts to chase down the total.

Needing a partnership to keep them in the game, Cutting and Steketee contrived to do that. Struggling to keep up with the run rate, despite adding 32 in 4.1 overs, Green found a peach of a yorker to make a mess of Steketee’s stumps.

Later in the over, a smart piece of fielding from Cook left Lalor short of his ground to leave Heat floundering at 7/114. Green finished his spell with excellent figures of 2-19 from his four overs.

Needing some lusty blows, Cutting obliged until Sams’ yorker ended the possibility of a win for the home team. Trying to make room to free his arms, Cutting managed to give Sams a target and the bowler did not miss.

Swepson, Zahir and Laughlin attempted to fix the mess that their batting line up had put them in, but they weren’t going to chase down the target.

Match Summary:

Sydney Thunder – 6/172 20 overs (Ferguson 73no, Ross 30, Swepson 2-11)

Brisbane Heat – 143 19.2 overs (Cutting 28, Green 2-19, Nair 2-22)

Sydney Thunder won by 29 runs

Attendance 26,784

Brisbane Heat: Chris Lynn (c), Tom Banton (wk), Max Bryant, Ben Cutting, Sam Heazlett, Josh Lalor, Ben Laughlin, Matt Renshaw, Mark Steketee, Mitch Swepson, Zahir Khan

Sydney Thunder: Callum Ferguson (c), Jonathan Cook, Matthew Gilkes, Chris Green, Alex Hales, Usman Khawaja, (wk), Nathan McAndrew, Arjun Nair, Alex Ross, Daniel Sams, Chris Tremain