Renegades Beat Hurricanes by 4 Wickets — Decided by a Wicketkeeper's Gloves on the Last Ball

Cricket has a rule for nearly everything, and on Wednesday night in Hobart one of its least-used rules decided a match. With one ball left, Melbourne Renegades and Hobart Hurricanes were level on 154. Deandra Dottin swung and missed, Lizelle Lee took the ball standing up, and the players drifted together expecting a Super Over. Then the replay came up. Lee's gloves had taken the ball in front of the stumps, which the Laws do not allow, and the umpires called a no-ball. The extra run won the game for the Renegades by four wickets.

It was a cruel way for the Hurricanes to lose a match they had fought back into. The Renegades had been cruising at 101 for 1 in the 13th over, and lost five wickets for 37 to make it close. But the Hurricanes are now 0 and 3, at the bottom of the ladder, and may have lost Chinelle Henry to injury as well.

The Renegades captain set this up in the second over. Sophie Molineux had Lee lbw with the first ball of it and bowled Rachel Trenaman two balls later, and the Hurricanes were 8 for 2. She came back to remove Heather Graham and Maddy Green and finished with 4 for 22, the best figures of the night by some distance.

The chase belonged to Hayley Matthews. She reached 50 off 33 balls with eight fours, and with Courtney Webb added 69 off 52 for the second wicket. At 87 for 1 after ten overs the Renegades were well ahead of the rate. Then it fell apart quickly: Webb was bowled by Carey at 101, Molly Strano leapt high for a one-handed return catch to remove Molineux, and Graham bowled Matthews for 59. Three wickets in twelve balls left the Renegades on 110 for 4. Wareham's 17 off 11 and Dottin's unbeaten 15 got them close enough for the finish to matter.

Nicola Carey rescued the innings from 8 for 2. She made 62 off 43 with ten fours, and when she was bowled by Matthews at 105 for 5, Chinelle Henry took over with 36 off 18, including seven fours, before being run out in the last over. Then Henry bowled one over for 14, left the field with what looked like a hip injury, and did not return. With the ball, Graham's 3 for 24 and Carey's two wickets dragged the Hurricanes back into a game that had looked lost.

What cost them was the clock. The Hurricanes were behind the over rate, so for the last over they could have only two fielders outside the circle. With five needed off three balls and a dot ball bowled, Dottin edged the next one to the deep third boundary for four, to a spot where a fielder would probably have been stationed. That tied the scores. The no-ball did the rest. Neither moment was a matter of luck. Both were avoidable.

Bellerive gave the new-ball bowlers something early: both sides lost a wicket inside the first four overs, and the Hurricanes lost two in the second. After that it was a good surface for batting, with both sides scoring at more than seven and a half an over and the chase almost exactly matching the first innings. The total of 154 was enough to make a contest of it, but not enough to be safe.

Four overs, 22 runs, four wickets, and two of them inside three balls of the second over. Molineux took the Hurricanes' top order apart before it had settled and then came back to take two more as they tried to accelerate. On a night when 154 turned out to be almost exactly par, the wickets she took early were the ones that kept the Hurricanes from making 170.

Our preview did not pick a winner. It said home advantage at Bellerive was real but narrow and that one match-winning innings or spell could swing the result. Molineux's spell was that. We also suggested 150 might be below par under lights. 154 turned out to be exactly enough to tie, which is close to right. What no preview could have predicted was a game decided on a replay of where the wicketkeeper's gloves were.

The Renegades are off the mark at one win from three, sixth on the ladder. The Hurricanes are eighth and winless after three games, and how bad Henry's hip injury turns out to be will matter a great deal: she has been one of their few batters able to score quickly. They play Brisbane Heat on November 7.