Finn Allen put the team on his back last night, carrying the Scorchers to a mammoth total of 219 runs to defeat the Renegades by 50.
They now head back to Perth to play third placed Melbourne Stars in a battle for the top spot on the ladder and the easiest run to the BBL final.
It was Allen’s maiden century in the orange, knocking 101 off 53 and hitting five-fours and eight-sixes.
He spoke to Sports Breakfast this morning ahead of their winner-takes-all clash against the Stars tomorrow night.
“We’re playing a good brand of cricket and got some momentum going at the right end of the tournament,” he said.
“We’ve got an incredibly powerful lineup, I think our mantra for the season is to keep going and take the game on, especially with the ball as well, we want to be aggressive the whole way through.”
Perth took the Power Surge at its earliest opportunity, bringing all but two of the Renegades’ fielders into the inner circle through overs 11 and 12.
Allen kept the momentum going after Cooper Connolly was caught out, with Hardie and Turner also picking up the pace and hitting a combined six boundaries off their short time at the crease to further add to the Scorchers’ total.
“Hards and AT struck the ball hard from ball one and that’s what we’ve asked of them and they’ve been awesome this season,” he said.
“It was probably better that those boys were on strike, I was pretty cooked at that point it was pretty humid out there.”
The season has been rough on the opening batsmen’s body, seeing him suffer a hamstring injury at the start of the season and more recently a broken finger.
“Its broken but it’s non-displaced so basically fielding with a splint on means I can’t do much more damage to it and then batting obviously I’d have to get hit on the underside of my finger which is pretty hard to do so it’s just a case of playing through it and getting on with it.”
“I had some hammy trouble earlier in this tournament so I was erring on the side of caution, it’s just been cramping up a bit.
“I think I’ll get in the ice bath this afternoon and maybe a little massage and we’ll see how we go.”
The new designated batsmen rule was announced last night and could see Allen put the wicket keeping gloves down on the odd occasion, but he thinks Mitch Marsh is the front runner for that position given the Scorchers choose to use it next season.
“I don’t actually know too much about what the ruling is but I think Bison will have that one covered for us,” he said,
“I said to him last night I don’t think there’s anyone else who’s gonna have a chance to take that off him.”
The Scorchers and Stars will meet tomorrow at Optus Stadium to see who will get the smoothest run to the BBL championship.
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