Seattle Orcas 219 for 5 (Seifert 78, Breetzke 66, Shanaka 36*, Holland 2-20, Netravalkar 2-35) beat Washington Freedom 216 (Owen 61, Chapman 57, Gous 35, Baartman 4-33, Shanaka 3-44, Jasdeep 2-46) by five wickets
MLC 2026 continued to throw up big scores – and the early trend of chasing teams winning – as Seattle Orcas chased down Washington Freedom’s 216 with 14 balls to spare in Dallas on Friday night. There were four half-century-makers in the game, a 12-ball innings with a strike rate of 300.00, and a four-wicket haul – the Player of the Match was the bowler with the big wickets: Ottneil Baartman.
It was the two Baartman overs in the second half of the Freedom innings that totally changed the complexion of the game. At the start of the 15th over, Freedom were 175 for 2, going at a scoring rate of 12.50 with Mark Chapman on 51 off 21 and Andries Gous on 31 off 18. Six overs to go, so 60 – or even 80 – more?
But Baartman knocked Gous’ stumps out third ball, and then did the same to Glenn Maxwell next ball. Harmeet Singh accounted for Chapman in the next over. And Baartman, back for the 17th, Obus Pienaar caught at short third off the second ball and Marco Jansen bowled off the inside edge off the last. Those three overs had cost Orcas 18 runs, and Freedom five wickets.
There was no real way back after that, and Freedom added just 31 runs in the last four overs to limp to 216. Well below where they could have been after Mitchell Owen had smashed 61 in 25 balls at the top and, after a slow 24 in 20 from captain Steven Smith, Chapman and Gous had kept the good work going.
The pitch was clearly full of runs, and Freedom needed a Baartman to prevent Orcas from crossing the line. They didn’t have one.
Shayan Jahangir played his part in an opening stand of 52 runs in 3.2 overs with 17 in nine, but it was after he fell that things got as close to perfect as possible for Orcas. Matthew Breetzke joined Tim Seifert, who was fresh off a century in the first game of the season and already on 35 off 11 balls, and the two took Orcas all the way to 141 before Seifert fell off the last ball of the 11th over, the partnership worth 89 in just 46 balls. Seifert, the top-scorer in the game, had 78 in 33 balls.
There was a bit of a dip after that, as Breetzke (66 in 36), Shimron Hetmyer and Tim Robinson fell in the space of nine balls, but Shanaka was the right man for Orcas in the right place at the right time, smashing 36 not out in 12 balls to take his team home with more than two overs to spare.
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