Canes down Gades to lock in home final

The match in a tweet: Hurricanes to host in Hobart! Canes lock in home semi-final as Matthew Wade leads them to victory over the Renegades.

The score: Hobart Hurricanes 6-183 (Wade 58, McDermott 39no) beat Melbourne Renegades 8-167 (Cooper 44, Short 2-20)

The over: Riley Meredith has been one of the finds of the tournament for the Hurricanes, but his first over tonight was one he’d rather forget. The right-armer was hit for 23 from the opening over of the run chase, including 17 runs from one legal delivery. After conceding just a single from his first three balls, Meredith went nb, 5wd, 5nb, 5nb, 1 before finishing the over with four more leg byes. He finished his night with 1-43 from three overs having sent down 26 balls in total.

The skipper: Matthew Wade has arguably been the most in-form batsman in Australian domestic cricket in the past 12 months and he continued that form here with his sixth half-century of the season. He and D’Arcy Short shared another strong opening stand of 87 in less than nine overs, with Wade the aggressor in slamming 58 from just 30 balls, including six fours and four sixes. Coming just hours after he was overlooked for Australia’s ODI squad, it was more of the same from the veteran keeper-batsman.

The debut: He kept his trademark front-flip in his kit bag for now, but Qais Ahmad made a solid start to his BBL career. The Afghan teen picked up the crucial wicket of Aaron Finch and finished with 2-34 from his four overs as he and fellow Hurricanes spinner D’Arcy Short (2-20 from four) put the brakes on in the run chase.

The injury: It was only a minor issue in the end, but this moment certainly looked nasty for Ben McDermott. The right-hander’s attempted ramp shot didn’t quite go to plan and he needed a few moments to compose himself before facing up again.

The next stop: The Hurricanes still have one regular season game to go, against the Thunder in Sydney on Saturday night, before they host the first semi-final at Blundstone Arena next Thursday night. The Renegades are also finals-bound but will have to wait until the regular season concludes on Sunday to find out where and against whom they’ll be playing

Hurricanes XI: Matthew Wade (c/wk), D'Arcy Short, Caleb Jewell, Ben McDermott, George Bailey, Simon Milenko, Jofra Archer, Clive Rose, Qais Ahmad, David Moody, Riley Meredith

Renegades XI: Aaron Finch (c), Marcus Harris, Sam Harper (wk), Mackenzie Harvey, Tom Cooper, Mohammad Nabi, Daniel Christian, Cameron Boyce, Kane Richardson, Chris Tremain, Harry Gurney