Melbourne Renegades players have defended the Marvel Stadium surface after they squeezed out a two-wicket win over Perth Scorchers to end a six-match losing streak to the West Australian team.
Chasing the Scorchers 8-143, the Renegades were well placed at 3-96 in the tenth over but lost 5-44.
Captain Will Sutherland scored the winning runs with one over to go.
Social media fired up over a patchy looking outfield which looked well below its best following a university graduation ceremony last week attended by tens of thousands of people, plus several recent concerts from Pearl Jam and Coldplay among others.
"You look at the outfield and you think its going to be pretty uneven but its been pretty similar looking the last few years," Renegades paceman and player of the match Tom Rogers, who took 3-22, told Fox Cricket.
"Actually under foot and moving around on it as a player, it's pretty solid, you don't notice much difference."
"It's a lot better than it looks to be honest, there's no nasty ones we are getting in the face so we're grateful for that," Sutherland told Seven.
The Scorchers batters found the going tough on a seaming wicket after being sent in.
Cooper Connolly (66 off 50) and BBL debutant Matthew Spoors (29 off 26) were the only double digit scorers for the Scorchers.
While the Scorchers limped to 4-48 at halfway, the Renegades bashed 42 off their four power play overs.
They remained well ahead of the run rate through cameos from Tim Seifert (28 off 14), Jacob Bethell (30 off 22) and Laurie Evans (24 off 18).
The Scorchers spinners Ashton Agar (1-20 off 4) , Connolly (1-17 off 3) and captain Ashton Turner (1-3 off 1) slowed the run rate as well as taking wickets.
A brilliant direct hit run out by Matthew Kelly at deep midwicket reduced the 'Gades to 7-128 after 16 overs and Fergus O'Neill was caught at mid off with four needed off nine balls.
"We're an aggressive batting lineup so we don't want to change the way we play, we probably could have played some slightly better shots through the middle there," Sutherland told Seven.
A big feature of the game was an outstanding fielding performance from Renegades livewire. Mackenzie Harvey.
He pulled off a sensational catch at midwicket, taking a leaping backward one-handed grab to dismiss Spoors.
Mackenzie also executed a direct hit run out and saved several runs with his fielding.
Scorchers took 11 balls to score their first run and O'Neill (1-18 off 4) didn't concede any to his ninth delivery and then only from a misfield.
Australian one-day and T20 representative Connolly scored just one off his first 12 balls, but blasted the Scorchers to a respectable score, belting six sixes, including successive maximums over cover off quick Kane Richardson.
Renegades improved to 2-1 while Scorchers dropped to 1-2 after successive loses.
"We felt like we fought valiantly to hang in as long as we did, ten overs into the game we were well behind the eight ball," Turner told Seven.
