Double Success during Double Header finale in 2019/20 season

I woke the morning of the Dream 11 Super Smash final in 2019/20 absolutely exhausted after a long night with our son keeping us up throughout the night. I then looked outside, and the weather looked average with low cloud and drizzle engulfing our house. However, I carried on as usual and made my way to the Basin Reserve to hopefully catch some of the early final which was the Blaze v the Hearts. While driving down and listening on the radio it was clear the match was not going to start on time so once I pulled into the carpark I thought id have a little downtime before the show got under way. I ended up falling asleep in the car and woke 30mins later in a very confused state…. but refreshed at least…. I needed it as I knew I would be using a lot of mental energy throughout the day.

The Blaze finally ended up getting underway and comfortably won a shortened match and claimed the Super Smash title for the 3rd year in a row. They were unbeaten throughout the campaign, an incredible effort really. They were a huge inspiration to the Firebirds players throughout the season and watching them take teams apart gave them a huge buzz prior to taking the field every match.

Now it was the Firebirds turn and we managed to post a competitive total of 168. We we bowled and fielded we never let the Auckland Aces get going which was a great effort given they had an international top 4 of Guptill, Munro, Phillips, and Chapman. They ended up being 22runs short reaching 146-9 which meant the Wellington Firebirds were crowned Dream 11 Super Smash winners for the 2019/20 season and this capped off a memorable day. Not only because the Blaze won but also to have both teams win in front of our home crowd at the Basin Reserve was a first and a special day that will live in the memories for everyone who was involved. The last few overs of the match I experienced that feeling of absolute helplessness that I am sure many coaches experience. All you can do is watch and hope you and your team are on the right side of the ledger. I watched the last 3 overs on the TV in the changeroom lying on the physio table trying not to think of all the possible outcomes, every ball seemed to take so long, every ball seemed like we had won or lost, every ball was a step closer to achieving the double double.

Every team goes into a campaign to win it and I feel we had a team who truly believed in this right before any cricket was even played. We looked back on our past and took both positive and negative lessons from those previous teams and this helped build our experience, knowledge and understanding of how to go about t20 cricket. This drove everyone to firstly strive to be in the 11 and with this healthy competition it enabled players to continually want to improve. It also enabled fringe players to impress through other internal matches that were played. These players all knew exactly what was expected of them if they did come into the side so it gave them certainty as to what and how they should be training.

The main memory I will hold of this special day will be after the match when both the Firebirds and Blaze were celebrating in the Basin Reserve home changerooms holding aloft their respective trophies.

Here is a link to the scorecard and match report:

https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/super-smash-2019-20-1197604/auckland-vs-wellington-final-1197772/full-scorecard