Sydney Thunder 146 for 5 (Knight 48, Athapaththu 38) beat Hobart Hurricanes 113 for 8 (Graham 31, Darlington 3-16)
Three days after Hurricanes won by 31 runs in Hobart, Thunder scored a 33-run victory in a match reduced to 17 overs a side after rain delayed the start at North Sydney Oval by 30 minutes on Thursday.
Athapaththu (38 off 29) and Knight (48 off 28) helped the Thunder amass 146 for 5. Hurricanes smashed 18 off their first seven balls, but lost 5 for 13 in the last few overs.
Darlington claimed the big wickets of Lizelle Lee and Heather Graham and Athapaththu completed a good all-round effort by taking 1 for 11 off three overs of tidy spin, dismissing England star Danni Wyatt-Hodge.
England captain Knight, who missed the first game between the two teams, played some handsome shots and added momentum in the second half of the innings.
“It was really nice when you start a competition to hit the ground running and I thought ‘Atta’ was brilliant as well,” Knight told Seven. “We managed to get in a bit of a partnership there and it set up things at the end.”
Athapaththu, who was out for a first-ball duck on Sunday, was dropped at deep midwicket on 5. Her innings included sixes over deep midwicket and long off before she fell to a remarkable one-handed low diving return catch by Strano off a fierce drive.
“I didn’t have much time to think about it, it was a tracer bullet, so pretty happy it just stuck,” Strano said.
In reply, Lee clubbed boundaries off the first two balls of Hurricanes’ chase and three in the over then Wyatt-Hodge belted a six over backward point off the first ball of the second over.
Thunder struck back with Athapaththu having Wyatt-Hodge caught at backward point. Nicola Carey, who scored a 50 in last weekend’s game, then chopped a delivery from Shabnim Ismail onto her stumps, a ball after the South African quick struck her on the helmet.
Lee couldn’t maintain her early impetus and was adjudged lbw the first ball after the mid-innings break, though if she had used DRS, she would have been reprieved.
A brisk fourth-wicket stand of 43 between Graham and Elyse Villani gave Hurricanes hope before they were dismissed in successive overs to trigger a decisive collapse.
