BBL 2019-20: Match 28, Melbourne Stars vs Sydney Thunder – Stars end losing streak at the MCG, Haris Rauf’s hat-trick, Maxwell goes past Wright and more stats

Melbourne Stars continue their good performances in the 2019-20 BBL as they moved on to the top of the points table with their 6th win in seven matches. Some tight bowling by the Stars ensured the Sydney Thunder didn’t post a big total. Despite all their top four batsmen scored 25+ runs, the Stars got only 145/5 with Haris Rauf claiming a hat-trick in the last over. The Stars lost three early wickets by skipper Glenn Maxwell’s unbeaten 37-ball 59 and Marcus Stoinis’ 50 helped them to complete the chase with 13 balls to spare.

All the statistical highlights from the Melbourne Stars’ victory over the Sydney Thunder:

A hat-trick of wins over the Sydney Thunder:

3 – Melbourne Stars have defeated the Sydney Thunder for the 3rd time in a row in the Big Bash League. The Stars got better of Thunder by 3 wickets in Sydney earlier this season and by 8 wickets at the Carrara Oval in the last edition. Prior to these hat-trick wins, the Stars lost five consecutive matches against the Thunder.

Melbourne Stars end losing streak at the MCG:

2013 – The last instance of Melbourne Stars defeating Sydney Thunder at the MCG was way back in the 2012/13 season. The Stars lost their last three matches at the MCG against the Thunder. The Wednesday’s win was only the 2nd in six meetings against the Thunder for the Stars at the MCG.

Haris Rauf joins Rashid Khan with a hat-trick:

1 – Haris Rauf became the first player to take a hat-trick for the Melbourne Stars in the Big Bash League. He is also only the 2nd overseas player to claim a BBL hat-trick. Rashid Khan was the first overseas bowler with a BBL hat-trick which he picked up about 2 hours before Rauf. Overall, six bowlers have scalped a hat-trick in the Big Bash League thus far.

The other four BBL hat-tricks are – Xavier Doherty for the Hurricanes against Thunder in 2012-13, Andrew Tye for Scorchers against Heat and Sixers in 2016-17 and in 2017-18 respectively and Josh Lalor for the Brisbane Heat against Scorchers in 2018-19.

In fact, Rashid and Haris recorded the first instance of two BBL hat-tricks on the same day and also the first-ever instance of two hat-tricks in the same BBL season.

Glenn Maxwell goes past  Luke Wright:

1532 – Glenn Maxwell became the leading run-getter for the Melbourne Stars in the Big Bash League with 1532 runs. He went past Luke Wright who has aggregated 1479 BBL runs for the Stars. Maxwell was only seven runs away from going past Wright prior to this match.

Nathan Coulter-Nile @ 50:

50 – The wicket of Usman Khawaja was the 50th wicket in the Big Bash League for Nathan Coulter-Nile. He is only the 16th player to claim 50 wickets in the BBL thus far.

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