The Adelaide Strikers have won back-to-back games in front of their home crowd to keep their KFC BBL|13 season alive, beating the Hobart Hurricanes by five wickets at Adelaide Oval on Tuesday night.
Captain Matt Short won the bat flip and sent the Hurricanes into bat before the Strikers dominated the first seven overs.
Left arm quick David Payne got a wicket with his first ball of the night, removing Caleb Jewell.
Two overs later, fellow Englishman Jamie Overton got two wickets in three balls, with Mac Wright and Sam Hain both well caught by Australian keeper Alex Carey, playing his first BBL match of the season.
Wickets continued to fall in clumps, with Cameron Boyce getting Corey Anderson and Nikhil Chaudhary in consecutive balls in the seventh over, as the Hurricanes fell to 5-36.
With his second wicket, Boyce became just the 10th player in Big Bash history, and only the second spin bowler after Adam Zampa, to bring up 100 wickets in the competition.
It wasn’t just the milestone that had the fans impressed with Boyce, with the wrist spinner only conceding 13 runs from his four overs.
The Hurricanes slipped to 6-66 when Lloyd Pope claimed the wicket of the dangerous Tim David.
From there, opener Ben McDermott and Chris Jordan had an impressive partnership, lifting Hobart to 7-142, before Overton removed Jordan and got his third wicket of the innings, finishing with team-best figures of 3-23.
Carrying his bat, McDermott lifted his side to 7-165, leaving the Strikers 166 to chase in front of a 25,000 strong home crowd.
As they did in last week’s home match against the Scorchers, Adelaide’s top three started the innings on fire, bringing up the highest Power Play score of BBL|13 for the second match in a row.
D’Arcy Short (18 runs), Matt Short and Chris Lynn all contributed to the total of 1-57 at the end of the first four overs.
After the Power Play, Matt Short and Lynn continued on, racing to 100 off the first 10 overs and scoring 10 boundaries between them before being caught on 45 runs and 37 runs respectively.
Adam Hose was undone by a good Nathan Ellis yorker, bringing two South Australians to the crease in Carey and Thomas Kelly.
A super Power Surge, where the duo hit five boundaries, took the game away from the Hurricanes and the Strikers reached the total in the final over of the match.
The rematch isn’t far away, with the two teams set to face each other again on Thursday night, this time at Blundstone Arena.
You can watch it live on Channel 7, Kayo Sports and Foxtel, with first ball at 6:45pm ACDT.