Marsh’s 63 off 26 sets up a record Headingley chase as Sunrisers beat Super Giants

Jos Buttler and Heinrich Klaasen spent the last third of the innings taking Sunrisers Leeds apart. Their stand of 105 in 47 balls carried Manchester Super Giants from 75 for 2 to 180 for 3 and left 182 to defend at Headingley on Tuesday. In most weeks of The Hundred that is a winning score. Mitchell Marsh needed 26 balls to make it look ordinary.

Marsh takes the chase away

Marsh was fifty up inside 20 balls, six fours and five sixes in a 63 that never looked like it was building towards anything. It was simply happening. Ryan Rickelton fell for 13 with the score on 26, caught by Tom Moores off Josh Tongue, and from there Marsh and Zak Crawley put on 92 from 39 balls.

Sonny Baker eventually knocked him over with a yorker at 118 for 2, the 58th ball of the chase. By then the equation had shrunk to 64 off 42, which in this competition is barely an equation at all.

Crawley and Brook take 30 balls over the rest

Crawley finished unbeaten on 56 from 34, his fifty coming up in 29 balls, and Harry Brook did the closing in a manner that will not surprise anyone at his home ground. He made 42 from 17 without hitting a single four. All six of his boundaries cleared the rope.

Sunrisers got there at 186 for 2 in 88 balls, an eight-wicket win with 12 balls to spare in front of 9,438 people. It is the highest successful chase at Headingley in The Hundred and the third highest in the men’s competition since it started.

The Buttler and Klaasen show that was not enough

Sunrisers had put Manchester in first, and for 50 balls the decision looked reasonable. Tim Seifert made 28 from 16 before Brydon Carse had him caught by Matthew Potts, and Aiden Markram’s 32 from 23 ended with a substitute fielder taking the catch off Nathan Ellis.

Then Buttler and Klaasen arrived at the same crease. Buttler finished 63 not out from 33 with five fours and four sixes, two days after his 90 against Birmingham Phoenix at Old Trafford. Klaasen matched him almost stroke for stroke, 53 from 27, before Ellis had him caught by Matthew Revis with a ball of the innings left. Ellis was the one Sunrisers bowler who kept control, 2 for 32; Carse went for 47 and Abrar Ahmed for 43.

Four teams, eight points

Ten matches into the men’s competition the table is a traffic jam. Super Giants, Welsh Fire, MI London and Sunrisers Leeds all sit on eight points, separated only by net run rate. Manchester keep top spot at 1.194 despite the defeat, their first of the tournament, with Welsh Fire on 0.527, MI London on 0.183 and Sunrisers fourth on 0.032. Trent Rockets and Birmingham Phoenix have four points each. Southern Brave and London Spirit are still waiting for their first win.

An IPL derby in Yorkshire

There is an Indian subtext to this fixture that did not exist a year ago. Sun Group, who own Sunrisers Hyderabad, bought Northern Superchargers outright in a deal worth around 100 million pounds and renamed them Sunrisers Leeds. RPSG, who own Lucknow Super Giants, took 70 per cent of Manchester Originals with Lancashire holding the rest, and the Originals became the Super Giants.

Which is how Klaasen, who spent this year’s IPL playing for Sunrisers Hyderabad, came to score 53 against a team called Sunrisers on a Tuesday night in Leeds, while Marsh, a Lucknow Super Giants batter in April, spent the evening hitting the Super Giants for 63. The names have travelled 7,000 kilometres and landed on the wrong shirts.

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