With yet another strong showing in the Dallas Grand Prairie Stadium final, Washington Freedom completed a stellar season by winning the MLC 2024 title. The two top teams in the league split their matches this past week, with the San Francisco Unicorns even smashing a 177 target in only 14 overs in the first one.
Nevertheless, after giving up 207/5 on the eve of the major championship match, the Unicorns were never in the game. The Washington Freedom crushed their opponents under this mountain of runs after posting a season-high score. It was the biggest margin of victory (by runs) of the season, as Marco Jansen and Rachin Ravindra claimed three wickets apiece to lead the team to victory.
Steve Smith, the captain and talisman, did much of the heavy lifting on the night of the big final, setting the stage with a blistering 88 to take his season aggregate to 336 (at 148.67SR).
However, with five consecutive 50+ scores under his belt going into the game, compatriot and reliable opening partner Travis Head was not as helpful in helping the Freedom captain maintain a large total on the scoreboard this time. Head had an intriguing opening over, hitting two fours and surviving a dropped opportunity, as Freedom were asked to bat first on a great pitch.
But it was another Australian, Pat Cummins, who ended Freedom’s rapidly fading hopes with a ball that was back-of-length and slanted across Head, only for Head’s attempted hoick to be foiled by a thick edge.
In contrast, Smith had a pretty quiet start, managing just 10 runs off his first 11 balls after five overs, with Andries Gous giving the innings much-needed momentum. Before being dismissed for a 14-ball 21 in the sixth over, Gous hit two fours and a six off of Cummins’s second over. Smith finished a 49-run PowerPlay with a lofted drive and a sweep off Hassan Khan, having by then settled into something approaching a groove.
The Freedom captain picked up the pace during the middle overs, cleverly taking advantage of the uneven surface, and in the ninth over, he brilliantly exploited the wind to hit two sixes off Carmi le Roux.
With a fourth six in the eleventh, Smith reached a 34-ball half-century, which he exploited as a launchpad to increase the scoring rate even more. Glenn Maxwell’s appearance at the end of Rachin Ravindra’s wicket proved to be yet another boon to the Freedom’s run rate. With Smith hitting two sixes and a four at cow corner to bring his innings total of maximums to five, the two Australians hammered 28 runs out of Juanoy Drysdale’s 13th over.
Maxwell defeated Hassan Khan at the other end, but Smith was propelled into the eighties by a breathtaking scooped six into the first tier beyond fine-leg. Freedom looked strong for a total in the region of 220 after 16 overs with 168 on the board. When Smith attempted to draw, Cummins came back to temper those hopes with a short ball that got huge and had the hitter out for just 12 runs short of a century.
Then, at 40 (22) Josh Inglis made a diving catch behind the stumps to stop Maxwell’s charge. Even though Cummins tried his hardest to bowl his trademark into-the-wicket off-cutters towards the end of the game, Mukhtar Ahmed and Obus Pienaar managed to score 16 runs off an over by Haris Rauf, which helped Freedom surpass their own total of 206, which they had previously reached against the Texas Super Kings ten days prior.
The Unicorns’ hopes were dashed early when Jake Fraser-McGurk sliced a delivery from Marco Jansen onto his stumps. In the brief history of the MLC, a score of 200 has never been chased down.
The Unicorns were forced into a difficult situation by the end of the PowerPlay, as Jansen also took care of the highly effective Finn Allen with another chop-on. On the other hand, a week earlier, Saurabh Netravalkar fired Sanjay Krishnamurthi, who was in charge of Unicorns’ relentless pursuit of Freedom.
As the Unicorns faltered in their pursuit and dropped to 56 for 6, the writing of the winner’s name on the trophy might have started by the ninth over. Andrew Tye ended any slim aspirations of a Unicorns comeback by hitting two wickets in his second over to remove Josh Inglis and Corey Anderson. Before Ravindra put the icing on the Freedom cake by slicing through the tail with three of his own wickets, Jansen made a comeback to capture a third wicket, this time with a bouncer.
India
