The Brisbane Heat pulled off the heist of all heists by defeating the Sydney Thunder in tonight’s BBL encounter. Faced with a tricky chase of 158 on an equally tricky Sydney Showground wicket, the Heat melted to 67 for 6 after 11 overs – still 90 runs in arrears – and even the most optimistic of Queenslanders would have put this chase beyond Chris Lynn’s enormous capabilities. Yet Lynn proceeded to play one of the great T20 innings to guide his team to a 3 wicket win with 2 balls remaining. His undefeated knock of 85 off 48 balls single handedly consigned the Thunder to their third successive defeat.
Cricmetric scoured their databases to see if they could find a better come from behind winning chase. We were able to find only one previous occasion where a team batting second won the match after coming back from 6 or more wickets down at the end of the 11th over with 50 or more runs still to score. The occasion was the 19th match of the 2014 Champions League Match between the Lahore Lions and the Perth Scorchers. The Lions batted first and made 124/6 off their 20 overs. The Scorchers in reply were 50/6 after 11 but went on to win the match with 3 wickets and 6 balls remaining. The heroes on that occasion were Mitch Marsh (63 n.o. off 38) and Brad Hogg (28 n.o. off 19) who put on 68 for the 8th wicket to win the match.
So on that occasion, the Scorchers chased down the 74 runs required off the last 9 overs with just 4 wickets in hand.
The Heat tonight chased down 90 runs off the last 9 overs with just 4 wickets in hand to win the match.
Therefore this win to the Heat was (arguably) the best T20 come from behind chase ever!