‘A bad game’: Skipper’s brutally honest call

On the back of the news that the men in magenta couldn’t draft Steve Smith into the squad, the Sixers suffered two more blows in the hour leading up to The Qualifier.The first came when opener Jack Edwards was forced into isolation after his brother returned an inconclusive Rapid Antigen Test, and the news got worse when veteran batter Daniel Hughes rolled his ankle on the boundary rope during a fielding drill.Watch every KFC BBL Finals game Live & On-Demand on Kayo or catch up for FREE with minis on Kayo Freebies. Join Kayo Now >It left the two-time defending champions scrambling to fill their squad, and that’s the last thing you need when going up against the Perth Scorchers with a spot in the BBL final on the line.The chaotic preparation may have affected the Sixers, who looked flat in the field and out of sorts with the bat as they crumbled to be 7-55 in pursuit of Perth’s 3/189.“We played a bad game of cricket,” Henriques said.“We had a similar team to what we’ve had over the past few games, so there wasn’t really much disruption in terms of the team makeup.“Obviously Daniel Hughes going down in the warm-up wasn’t ideal, and we had a few guys go down with Covid today, but Silky (Jordan Silk) coming back into the team kind of equalled out the loss of Jack.“It was pretty unfortunate for Daniel in the warm-up to roll his ankle on the rope, but I still believe we had the team to go out there and win the game if we played well.“Everyone saw what happened and we spoke about what the adjustments were, who would bat where and what that meant in terms of the team makeup. It’s really unfortunate for Daniel, but we had to crack on and play a game of cricket.“We try to look forward and look to what we can do in the moment to try to do the best with what we’ve got. We just weren’t good enough.”The Sixers have a few days to regroup ahead of their next match on Wednesday against either the Sydney Thunder or the Adelaide Strikers, with the winner to play Perth in the final.Henriques says he’ll assess some of his options after a tough night in Melbourne. The Perth batters picked apart Sydney’s bowlers with ease and then made the Sixers look average with the bat.The margin could have been embarrassing had Ben Dwarshuis not blasted a career-best 66 off 28 to put some respectability on the total, but the Sixers don’t want to rely on a number nine batter to save them again when they return to the SCG on Wednesday.“Maybe I’ve got to have a look at some of the decisions I made when we were bowling, because we found it really hard to bat while the ball was new in the first 10-12 overs,” Henriques lamented.“And then Benny (came in) and that striking at the end was amazing. He made it look like he was batting on a different wicket to everyone else in our team.“I probably have to have a good luck at my plans as a skipper and whether I employed the right ones, and also have a look at the execution of what we spoke about before the game and whether that matched up with what we did during the game.” Via news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site https://www.news.com.au