San Francisco Unicorns 193 for 2 (Pretorius 66, Allen 45, Hardie 42*, Short 34*, Chaudhary 1-29) beat Washington Freedom 190 for 4 (Gous 83*, Owen 39, Chaudhary 32, Short 1-12) by eight wickets
Lhuan-dre Pretorius: 66 in 26 balls with three fours and seven sixes. Finn Allen: 45 in 18 balls with four fours and four sixes. Those are strike rates of 253.84 and 250.00. The stand between the two, the San Francisco Unicorns openers, was worth 102 runs. In 5.4 overs! Little surprise then that Washington Freedom, who had put up 190 for 4 after opting to bat first, were blown away with 29 balls left of their MLC 2026 game on Sunday night.
Faced with a target that needed a bit of work for Unicorns to get past, Pretorius hit three sixes and a four in the first over, bowled by Amila Aponso, which went for 24 runs. Allen took the lead in the next over, from Lockie Ferguson, which went for 18. The third, from Marco Jansen, went for 14, almost like a quiet period, only for 21 to come off the next, from Saurabh Netravalkar. Things did turn relatively quiet after that, with Ferguson conceding 15 and Jansen 12, while also sending Allen back, but the powerplay ended at 104 for 1.
From there to the target was always going to be straightforward, bar a mishap. Pretorius was sent back by Nikhil Chaudhary in the ninth. For the record, Pretorius now has 58, 69*, 17, 87 and 66 in MLC 2026. That's 297 runs in five innings.
More than half the job was done already, and Matthew Short and Aaron Hardie, the Australian pair, did the rest, scoring unbeaten knocks of 34 in 26 and 42 in 22 respectively to take Unicorns to the top of the table with three wins in five outings. Freedom, meanwhile, are rock bottom after their third loss in five games.
In the first half, Steven Smith's mediocre run in MLC 2026 continued as he fell in the fourth over for 3 in eight balls, but Mitchell Owen - the only batter in the tournament so far with more runs than Pretorius - and Andries Gous steadied the ship and gave it a thrust. Owen fell for 39 in 20, but Gous batted till the end, scoring an unbeaten 83 in 50 balls with four fours and seven sixes.
There was a significant contribution from Chaudhary as well, as he scored 32 in 19 balls from No. 5 in a stand of 59 runs in 36 balls with Gous.
All of that meant things were looking quite decent for Freedom at the halfway stage, but it didn't take long for Pretorius and Allen to change the mood, and the game.
