Renegades Break Through Stars to Win 2019 Big Bash League

By: Chinmay Vaidya

For 12 overs, everything was coming up Melbourne Stars.

The Melbourne Renegades had put up 145 in their innings, but even that number came due to the contributions in the final five overs from Tom Cooper and Dan Christian. The Renegades were 91-5 after 15 overs, but Cooper and Christian accelerated in the last quarter of the innings to provide some floor. Still, they looked to be about 15-20 runs short.

The Stars were 89-0 after 12 overs with Ben Dunk and Marcus Stoinis settled in. The required run rate was 7.2. Renegades captain Aaron Finch appeared to be running out of options, even admitting after the game he was close to throwing the towel. 

What happened next was part of quite possibly the greatest collapse in cricket history given the circumstances and the situation.

In the next four overs, the Renegades took four wickets and yielded just 12 runs. Here is what happened in those overs.

Over 13: Wicket, 4 runs conceded - Cameron Boyce
Over 14: Wicket, 2 runs conceded - Chris Tremain
Over 15: Wicket, 4 runs conceded - Boyce
Over 16: Wicket, 2 runs conceded - Tremain

All of a sudden, the Stars were 101-4 facing a required run rate of 11.25 for the final four overs. Throw in some reckless batting and the worst shot I've ever seen from Dwayne Bravo and you have the makings for an epic collapse. The highlights speak for themselves.

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Peter Handscomb, Glenn Maxwell, Nic Maddinson, Seb Gotch and Bravo basically handed their wickets to the Renegades on a silver platter. Give props to Finch for bringing his field in, preventing easy runs and building the pressure to force the Stars to lose their composure, but good god this was irresponsible batting.

It's the first BBL title for the Renegades, who had just three players score a half century in the entire tournament. Christian was the Man of the Match and had a fantastic tournament overall. After being left out of the IPL auction, he showed he still has plenty of cricket left and is a capable all-rounder in the T20 format.

The Renegades took advantage of the pressure situation they created. The Stars will take some time to get over this one.