Big Bash League: Perth Scorchers trounce Sydney Sixers to win club’s sixth title at Optus Stadium

Perth Scorchers are the heavyweight champions of the Big Bash League, trouncing Sydney Sixers in their legacy title bout.

The Scorchers are the best club in the history of the competition and the unstoppable force of Australian sport, winning their record-extending sixth championship in just 15 years at Optus Stadium on Sunday evening.

The six-wicket triumph over Sydney Sixers — their sixth meeting to decide the title — put a full-stop on a remarkable turnaround after exiting the finals early and then missing altogether in the two years since they last stood on top of the mountain.

It was a movie we had seen before, but it wasn’t a classic of its genre. Perth bowled the Sixers out on the final ball of their innings for 132.

Before a record orange-bathed crowd of 55,018, David Payne set it up with the ball and Finn Allen and Mitch Marsh knocked them down.

English import Payne took 3-17 with the ball in a famous spell of craft, guile and patience, before Marsh made 44 and Allen 36 to run down the total in just 17 overs.

It was Perth’s only complete batting performance at their Optus Stadium home all season. Their top-score at the venue this season was 153, but this pitch was the best that had been rolled out all summer and their innings proved Sydney were well below par.

The Sixers’ heavy travel load, where they had travelled from Brisbane to Perth, back to Sydney and then to Perth again in just over a week, took its toll and their season unravelled in a big-game car crash.

Perth also took down their two Ashes heroes. Steve Smith’s dismissal for 24 — an lbw to Aaron Hardie which was overturned on review — was the biggest moment of the match and was his lowest completed innings of the season.

Mitchell Starc took 1-33, but not before Allen took hold, taking one powerplay over for 19 runs. He had bowled out after 13 overs in a desperate bid to make a dent in the Scorchers.

Allen reached 485 runs for the season, passing Aaron Hardie’s mark for the most-ever by a Scorcher. By the time Hardie replaced Allen at the crease in the eighth over, they needed less than five runs an over to win.

Marsh set the tone by pulling Sean Abbott’s first ball of the innings for six and cleared the rope once more to go with four boundaries in his masterpiece of an innings. When they weren’t reaching the boundary, balls were being laced to fielders in a power-packed display just weeks before he captains Australia at a World Cup.

Allen eventually fell to a stunning diving catch by Jack Edwards. Hardie went for five when he edged a ball off Abbot, who also ended Marsh’s stand.

Captain Ashton Turner came and went for two off six balls in a game of pass-the-parcel with the winning runs. Connolly was dropped on just one, before Inglis sealed the deal with a monster six over mid-off.

Payne took the key wickets of Josh Phillipe, Lachie Shaw and Moises Henriques in the first innings after the Sixers were sent in. It is a spell that will put him among the franchise’s great imports.

He would have had a fourth, if not for the Scorchers landing on the receiving end of another catch controversy. Joel Davies was recalled to the crease after the third umpire deemed Cooper Connolly did not have control over his body before he touched the ball on the grass.

The almost-identical situation to Turner’s non-catch against Melbourne Renegades earlier this month left the Perth crowd steaming.

It cost just four runs, with Davies bowled by Jhye Richardson in the next over.

The innings orbited around Smith. He faced just two of the first four balls and inside-edged his first from Connolly.

It looked like a nervous start, but it gave way to a masterful 10 minutes of stroke-making where he targeted Perth’s on-pace bowling.

Mahli Beardman went wide, Smith carved him over cover. Beardman went full, Smith pasted him down the ground. When he got a ball from Richardson to pitch and roll to long-on boundary, he looked impregnable.

He had raced to 24 off 13 when it happened. Hardie was brought on and clattered a ball into Smith’s pads. A gutsy review by Turner proved it was going on to hit and the batting master was gone.

After battling with off-pace bowling — including a Payne over that topped out at 115km/h an over and went for just two runs — Hardie was the third bowler to hit Smith on the pads with the first ball of his spell.

At the other end, Daniel Hughes had survived a nervy moment where he’d chipped a chance to Brody Couch, but then flashed at a Richardson wide ball he hit to third man.

Smith’s dismissal burst the Sixers’ balloon. Beardman was brought back to target Moises Henriques and Josh Phillipe — two of the men he claimed in Tuesday night’s Qualifier — but it was the medium-pace of Payne that brought about the next wicket.

Phillipe flicked a ball back to Payne he had let go at just 109km/h to leave them 3-66 and Payne with 2-7.

The 15th over began with a sense that something had to give. In a bid to shake-up the contest, Henriques took the power-surge while he was on 24 off 26 balls and with Shaw 14 off 11.

Something did give, when Shaw skied a wide ball from Payne to Mitch Marsh at gully.

Bowled Payne, caught Marsh is how captain Henriques fell after a painful innings just two balls later.

Perth swept up 3-10 in the power surge, leaving Sydney 6-104 with four overs remaining. Then they took 4-10 in the final two overs of the innings and the final five wickets fell for just 28 runs. Beardman finished with 2-29 and Richardson 3-32.

Three players — Allen, Beardman and Couch — became champions for the first time.