Around the festive break we wrote about how the Melbourne Renegades had been underrated for glory in the Big Bash. Since then they have suffered the savage blow of a season-ending injury to their star all-rounder, Dwayne Bravo, and then beaten their cross-city rivals, the Stars, by seven runs.
That was some way to get over the absence of Bravo. Stars, who have tried to live up to their name by signing as many big names as possible, were the pre-series favourites for the title.
The two meet again on Saturday, this time at Docklands, where Renegades lost to Perth Scorchers in the game that Bravo was injured. It continued their horrific record at the home venue where they didn’t win at all last season.
They are 2 with Paddy Power and Ladbrokes to end that sequence with the Stars 1.8 with the same two firms.
We reckon that is value about the Renegades as we have long had a downer on the Stars at odds on, particularly as we reckon they don’t do much thinking or preparation. They just go out and rely on talent and reputation.
Renegades are different. That was emphasised by their decision to open the batting with Sunil Narine, the West Indies spin bowler, against Stars. It was bizarre. He had never batted higher than No 6 in his international career.
Yet Renegades had done some analysis on the way he bats and the way Michael Beer bowls, reckoning Narine would take a fancy to him. In the end, Narine took more of a fancy to other bowlers and the ploy worked with him striking at 161.
When defending, Renegades opened the bowling with batsman Tom Cooper because they thought he would expose a weakness in the game of Glen Maxwell, Stars’ most fearsome hitter. It worked in the first over with Maxwell out for one. It is that attention to detail which makes them such an attractive betting proposition.
Nous will surely be the deciding factor again and in Narine and Brad Hogg, Renegades could still boast more than the Stars. In that last match-up, the spin twins proved to be the difference both going at fewer than 6.5 an over.
Given that Renegades are heavy on analysis they would have noticed that Stars are not as potent when pace is off the ball. Against Hobart, they struggled to get tweaker Clive Rose off the square. So we could see more part-time spin from Cooper, Cameron White and even skipper Aaron Finch.
That’s one way of filling the void left by Dwayne Bravo. His replacement is beefcake Trent Lawford. Unfortunately, he went for almost 12 an over against Stars and his career economy rate of 8.92 is far too high. The less he bowls the better for our bet.
Here are the last 14 first-innings scores at Docklands Stadium with 1 or 2 denoting whether the side batting first or second won: 148-2/170-1/155-2/170-2/172-2/166-1/80-2/169-1/114-2/151-1/104-2/163-2/210-1/183-1. There is no real trend on the toss, which is consistent with drop-in wickets.
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