Texas Super Kings vs Washington Freedom, 27th Match, Major League Cricket 2026 - CommentaryTSK vs WAF, 27th Match, Major League Cricket 2026 - Commentary

Three matches remain in the group stage, one team (TSK) is eliminated, and four teams are tied on 10 points. Seattle Orcas will be eager to join them and keep their hopes alive. They'll take on San Francisco Unicorns and that match will commence shortly. See you there...

Steve Smith | WF captain: You've got to be confident all the way through. You know, I've seen Benny Dwarshuis play for a while now, and his batting's come a long way. He's got a lot of power. He can go from ball one. And, the way he was able to just wait for his balls tonight and get the job done was great to see. But, I thought our bowlers did a really good job as well to restrict them to what we did. They got off to a decent start, and I think we might have got nine for 50 or something at the back end there, with our spinners doing the job. So, it was a good performance. It was getting trickier and trickier the slower it got. We've got some strong guys there that can still hit the ball when it's slow like that. They did a really good job and nice to get over the line. (On his batting) It was nice to hit a couple out of the middle. It was a little bit slower this wicket than what we've probably played on when we were here previously. It was nice to hit a couple in the middle and contribute. (What about this points table?) I think it's a big game for us tonight, watching this. So, yeah, we'll have a look, and hopefully the result swings in the right way and gets us through.

Ben Dwarshuis | Most Valuable Player: (How did you turn it around?) A little bit early than I would normally go to the crease. So, just tried to give myself a couple of balls to see what the wicket was doing. And then you just can use that swing hard and hopefully connect with a few. (On hitting three sixes in the 17th over) I just felt like that was the easier end to target. Obviously, downwind and Obus hit a nice six as well. So, his short side as well. So, I felt like that was the over that we could sort of bring the rate down to semi-controllable, try and take our medicine off Milne, and then go again from that end. So, we had a little plan out there, and it was nice it worked. (How big is that win?) It's massive. It sort of keeps our hopes alive. And we'll be watching eagerly tonight to see who wins this one. And where that puts us. So, it's tight there. It sort of changes every game. So, we'll turn up tomorrow and hopefully win again.

Faf du Plessis | TSK captain: Disappointing. First of all, we got ourselves into a great batting position and I thought we batted not great in that last eight overs. We lost five wickets for 50 runs. So we felt after halfway we were maybe 15 runs short, but then it was a great fight by the boys, putting a lot of hard work in to take it to the last over. When you get so close once again, it's the third game now where we take it to the last over, two balls to go and just not being able to finish it off. (On the batting collapse) Yeah, just poor decision-making. I think on a wicket like that, it's really important to still have your intensity to build a partnership. New guys coming in, it always feels a little bit harder. So as an in batter, felt like as soon as you get that partnership going, you could really put the pressure back on. But as soon as we did six, seven, eight or nine balls of putting that partnership back together, a wicket fell. And that happened about four times in a row. So it's difficult to get the momentum and put the bowlers under pressure. So yeah, definitely lost a bit around there.

In reply, Washington Freedom lost Owen cheaply. But Smith and Rachin Ravindra batted positively to stitch a 60-run partnership for the second wicket. Akeal Hosein broke the stand and both the set batters were dismissed in quick succession. From 79/1, the visitors slipped to 107/6. With 52 runs needed off the last 4 overs, TSK seemed like the favourites. However, Dwarshuis had other ideas. The 17th over went for 22 runs with Abhimanyu Lamba conceding three sixes and that brought the asking rate down to around 10 RPO. With 10 needed off the final over, Dwarshuis hit a six down the ground off Milne that sealed the deal for the Freedom.

19:14 Local Time, 00:14 GMT, 05:44 IST: Glum faces in the TSK camp as they are out of the playoffs race. Dwarshuis, meanwhile, sports a big smile, having played a blinder to take his team home. Inserted to bat in a must-win game, the hosts got off to a terrific start scoring close to 100 in the first ten overs. They collapsed in the second half of the innings and scored just 33 runs for the loss of five wickets in the last 5 overs to finish on 165.

The field comes in as WF need just 1 run

Faf has a word with the bowler