Perth Scorchers Beat Melbourne Stars by 15 Runs — Sophie Devine's 4 for 19 Defends 124 at Junction Oval

At the halfway point of their innings, Perth Scorchers had 76 for 7 on the board and the look of a side that had lost the match before it had properly started. By the end of the evening they had won it by 15 runs. T20 cricket likes to tell you it belongs to the hitters; every so often a small total, defended with nerve, reminds you that it still belongs to the bowlers who refuse to believe the scoreboard.

Katie Mack and Beth Mooney put on 37 in 26 balls, and then the innings fell apart. From 70 for 2 the Scorchers lost five wickets for six runs between the eighth and 11th overs, Devine, Freya Kemp, Mikayla Hinkley, Chloe Piparo and Fatima Sana all gone. Amy Jones held four catches behind the stumps.

What saved them was the lower order. Chloe Ainsworth made 16, Alana King 18 and Lilly Mills 13 not out, and the last three wickets added 48. The Stars helped too: 21 extras was more than any Scorchers batter made.

The chase began badly when Rhys McKenna was caught behind off the first ball. Devine then took Jones and Annabel Sutherland in the fourth over, and 30 for 1 became 30 for 3. Meg Lanning held it together with 41 off 36, and her stand of 36 with Charlie Dean took the Stars to 79 for 4 in the 13th over, needing 46 from just over seven. Then Devine had Dean stumped and Lanning was caught off Amy Edgar early in the following over, and the target suddenly looked a long way off. The last three wickets fell at 109 without a run added, two of them to King in the 18th over.

Nineteen wickets fell for 233 runs, and spin did plenty of the work on both sides: Sophie Day, Maisy Gibson and Charlie Dean shared six Scorchers wickets, and King's leg-spin went for 17 in four overs. It was not a pitch for hitting through the line, and the side that bowled straighter for longer won.

Devine made 11 off 13 with two fours before falling in the collapse, so her batting was not the story. Her four overs were. She took Jones and Sutherland when the Stars were starting well, came back to break the Lanning-Dean stand, and removed Dani Gibson at 102 when the Stars still had a sniff. Four wickets, every one of them at a moment that mattered, for 19 runs.

Our match preview gave the Stars a marginal edge on home advantage at Junction Oval and suggested evening dew could help the side batting second. The Stars won the toss, chose to chase, and lost. That call was wrong. The preview's other point, that the Scorchers' bowling could defend a modest total, turned out to be the whole match.

The Scorchers are 2-0 and second on net run rate, behind the Sydney Sixers and just ahead of the Sydney Thunder, who are also unbeaten. The Stars have one win from three games and sit fifth.