Chris Gayle may have been missing from Western Australia's KFC Twenty20 Big Bash team, but Ashley Noffke returned and starred as the Warriors' took care of Victoria on Sunday night to go a long way to booking a home preliminary final.
WA's 24-run win over the Bushrangers at the WACA puts the Warriors in prime position to host the preliminary final with another win at the Gabba on Saturday over Queensland.
WA made 5-152 after electing to bat first on a difficult batting wicket, but then their bowlers did tremendously well restricting Victoria to just 8-128 from its 20 overs. Brad Knowles took 3-20, Aaron Heal 2-22 and Noffke 2-23.
WA coach Tom Moody was obviously happy with the performance in the field after a slightly below par batting performance.
"I felt we were probably 15 short of what we should have been. It was clearly a slightly harder wicket to bat on than it was in the previous game when we scored a high 190. We felt around 165-170 was where we needed to be and we obviously fell short of that," Moody said.
"The pleasing thing was that we assessed the conditions very quickly and executed superbly. Our bowling and fielding performance won us the game hands down."
Noffke had gone for 0-55 and 1-41 in his first two Big Bash matches this season for WA and found himself dropped for last Tuesday's game with New South Wales, but he made a tremendous return making a quick-fire 13 off seven balls at the end of WA's innings and then taking 2-23.
Moody always felt that the veteran would bounce back and for Noffke to make a big impact for the Warriors.
"He was left out purely because of balance more than anything else. We also felt that Hogan was an important addition to the side because he swung the ball early, and has been bowling well. Noffers hasn’t had much luck and you need a bit of it in Twenty20's as a bowler, and he didn’t in the first two games," Moody said.
"We picked more on balance than anything else and we felt in these conditions the extra bowler was important. Given he's more than handy in the middle order, it wasn’t too much of a loss on the batting front.
"He is the ultimate professional and went away looking through all his footage carefully trying to find areas he could improve and where he possibly let himself down. He prepared to come back and come back hard, and he did that very well."
There is still plenty of improvement that could come into the WA line-up in the form of West Indies captain Gayle. He is still struggling with a side strain, but Moody is hopeful that he will be right to play Queensland on Saturday.
That decision won't be made until the morning of the game, though, and will depend on how he's feeling when running and fielding, as his batting is now OK.
"He had a decent net this morning and was reasonably comfortable, but as soon as we tried to get him a bit more active with fielding exercises he just wasn’t right. It was unfair on him and the team to then take the risk," he said.
"We are hoping obviously that time will be on our side now and that because we don’t play until Saturday he has more time to feel more comfortable. But at the end of the day it's one of these delicate injuries to the intercostals. It's a patience game and we are doing everything we possibly can, he's doing everything he can to get it right too."