The Adelaide Strikers and the Sydney Thunder confirmed their squads for New Year’s Eve while SuperCoach BBL explained the implications of Thursday’s postponed game and a Pakistani import was linked with the Brisbane Heat.

TEAM NEWS

The Adelaide Strikers named a 13-man squad to play the Sydney Thunder at Adelaide Oval for Friday’s New Year’s Eve game, with Daniel Drew ($43k BAT) added at the expense of Henry Hunt ($42k BAT) and Liam Scott ($52k BAT/BWL).

The Thunder confirmed a 15-man squad with Jono Cook ($91k BWL), Baxter Holt ($62k BAT/WKP) and Chris Tremain ($86k BWL) dropping out.

Strikers: Siddle (c), Agar, Fawad Ahmed, Garton, Kelly, Rashid Khan, Nielsen, Renshaw, Short, Weatherald, Wells, Worrall

Thunder: Billings, Cutting, Davies, Doggett, Gilkes, Green (c), Hales, Mahmood, McAndrew, Ross, Sams, Sandhu, J.Sangha, T.Sangha, Tremain, Whiteman

POSTPONED GAME

Thursday’s Perth Scorchers-Melbourne Stars game was postponed after a Stars support staff member tested positive to COVID-19. The Stars squad were close contacts and had to be tested, with those results not available prior to the scheduled time of the game, thus the postponement.

It’s too early to say when the game will be played, but both sides have busy upcoming schedules and thus it’s unlikely it’ll be anytime soon.

Scorchers coach Adam Voges said: “This is a pretty heavy period for us in terms of games played, this would’ve been our third game in five days to go with a couple of flights. We were ready to go, we won’t mind having a couple of extra days break.”

The Scorchers play the Stars on January 2, along with games on January 5, 6 and 9. The Stars play that January 2 game along with more on January 3, 7 and 10.

In terms of implications, SuperCoach BBL said: ” The postponed Stars-Scorchers game has been removed from Round 7 of KFC SuperCoach. This game will become part of the round it is played closest to when a rescheduled date is announced. Should it be played this weekend during Round 7, the round will proceed as planned.

” We understand this will inconvenience some teams and should it be confirmed it will be played after Round 7, an additional trade will be added for Round 7 to compensate. This trade will not carry over and from Round 8 onwards SuperCoach will revert to three trades per round.

” Scorchers and Stars players will act like bye players and will not lock out until the start of the last game of Round 7 unless their match is rescheduled as part of Round 7.”

UPDATES

Sean Abbott ($234k BWL) was the star in Wednesday’s Sydney Sixers win and he drew praise from skipper Moises Henriques. He said: “Sean & Ben (Dwarshuis) took six wickets between them. When we were 8-46 they put on a match-winning partnership. It was quite a night out for both of them.”

Pakistani international Fakhar Zaman (BAT) has been heavily linked with a BBL move and there’s strong mail that he’s flown out for Australia to join the Brisbane Heat who are down a foreign batsman following Tom Abell’s injury.

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