WBBL|12 Opening Day: Thunder and Stars Win at Junction Oval

By TaazaPulse News Desk · Published: 29 October 2026 · TaazaPulse Cricket Desk

The Women's Big Bash League roared back into life in Melbourne on Thursday as WBBL|12 opened with a double-header at Junction Oval: Sydney Thunder chased down 139 to beat the Melbourne Renegades by six wickets, and the Melbourne Stars piled up 192 for 4 to beat the Hobart Hurricanes by 18 runs. Georgia Voll's all-round display and a vintage Meg Lanning half-century headlined a first day that delivered exactly what the tournament promises.

Two matches, two statements. The Thunder, finalists last season, began their campaign by hunting a modest target with 18 balls to spare. The Stars, in the game that followed, produced the day's heavyweight batting performance, with captain Meg Lanning's 71 and Annabel Sutherland's 57 setting a total the Hurricanes chased gamely but never quite threatened to reach. The season runs from 29 October to 5 December, and on this evidence the standard has risen again.

Voll does it with ball and bat as Thunder chase 139

The Renegades' 138 for 9 was a tale of one strong innings and a collapse that will trouble them. Hayley Matthews, the West Indies star, made 45 to give the innings its spine, but around her the batting kept stalling, and the ending was dramatic: the Renegades lost five wickets in the space of seven balls late in the innings, an implosion that turned a competitive 160-plus platform into a below-par total. Georgia Voll was central to the damage, taking 4 for 26 with her off-spin — career-best figures — as the Thunder's bowlers closed the innings out ruthlessly.

There was also a moment for the romantics. Tayla Vlaeminck, the Australian fast bowler whose career has been repeatedly interrupted by injury, took her first WBBL wicket in five years, a landmark that drew warm applause at Junction Oval and matters beyond this match: a fit Vlaeminck changes what the Renegades' attack can be this season.

The chase was managed with the calm of a side that has played a lot of finals cricket. Anika Learoyd anchored it with 48, Voll completed her day with 25 from 18 balls, and a 62-run partnership involving Heather Knight — the former England captain now wearing Thunder green — took the game away from the Renegades. The Thunder reached their target with three overs unused, winning by six wickets, and Voll was the obvious Player of the Match: four wickets, then quick runs in the chase. There are worse ways to open a season.

Vlaeminck's long road back

One wicket in the Renegades' defeat deserves its own paragraph. Tayla Vlaeminck is among the fastest bowlers Australia has produced in the women's game, and among the most unlucky: her career has been interrupted again and again by serious injury, with long rehabilitations replacing the seasons she was meant to dominate. A first WBBL wicket in five years is a statistic that contains surgeries, setbacks and entire summers of rehab. Whatever the Renegades achieve this season, a fit Vlaeminck bowling at full pace through it would be a victory of its own — and on Thursday, back on a WBBL scoresheet at last, that long project took a real step.

Lanning and Sutherland power Stars to 192

If the first match was about control, the second was about weight of runs. The Melbourne Stars' 192 for 4 was built on the two innings the home crowd came to see. Meg Lanning, in her first WBBL campaign since returning to the league, made 71, batting with the timing and placement that have defined her career. Annabel Sutherland added 57, and then took three wickets with the ball to complete a genuine all-round day of her own.

The Hurricanes did not fold. Lizelle Lee, the former South Africa opener, struck a half-century to keep the chase moving, and the Hurricanes reached 174 for 8 — a total that would have won plenty of WBBL matches, just not one in which the opposition had posted 192. Charlie Dean, the England spinner, was the Stars' most economical bowler, and her control through the middle overs ensured the required rate kept climbing beyond the point where even Lee's hitting could retrieve it. The Stars won by 18 runs.

Two chases, one lesson

Set the two games side by side and they form a neat pair of case studies in T20 chasing. The Thunder, asked to make 139, paced their pursuit around wickets in hand — Learoyd's 48 as the anchor, Voll's 25 off 18 and Knight's experience applied at the moments of pressure — and finished with three overs to spare, the signature of a chase that was never truly in doubt after the powerplay. The Hurricanes, asked for 193, had no such luxury: Lee's half-century was an innings of genuine quality, but a chase of that size needs two such innings and a cameo, and Hobart found only one. Sutherland's three wickets closed the door the batters had opened. It is the oldest equation in the format: totals under 150 defend poorly, totals near 200 defend themselves — and on opening day both halves of the equation were proven by tea-time.

What opening day told us

Opening days should be read with caution, but some signals are worth noting. First, the all-rounders ran the day: Voll (4 for 26 and 25 off 18), Sutherland (57 and three wickets) — in a tournament played at high tempo on true Australian wickets, players who give a side two innings' worth of value are gold. Second, Lanning's form: a 71 on the opening day of her return season instantly makes the Stars a side nobody will want to bowl to. Third, the Renegades' collapse — five wickets in seven balls — is the kind of middle-order fragility that decides tight leagues, and fixing it becomes their week's work.

The tournament now rolls on at pace. Friday brings the Brisbane Heat against the Sydney Sixers, the competition's glamour fixture, and the eight teams will barely pause for breath across a five-week season that ends on 5 December. If Thursday was the league showing its best face — two matches, four innings of substance, an all-round masterclass in each game and a returning legend top-scoring in one of them — then the WBBL's twelfth season has opened by making its own argument for why it remains the competition every other women's league is measured against. For Pakistani readers following the women's game, WBBL|12 is also a window on the standard Pakistan's own players are chasing: the league remains the benchmark for women's franchise T20 cricket, the tournament every young cricketer in Lahore or Karachi measures her game against. We will keep following it in our cricket coverage as the season builds.

The league that sets the standard

Some context for readers new to it: the WBBL is the women's edition of Australia's Big Bash League, an eight-team franchise T20 competition that has been running since 2015 and is widely regarded as the strongest women's domestic league in the world. Its squads mix Australia's contracted internationals with leading overseas players — Thursday's cast alone included West Indies captain Hayley Matthews, former England captain Heather Knight, England spinner Charlie Dean and former South Africa opener Lizelle Lee — and its matches are played at proper cricket grounds, in this case Melbourne's Junction Oval, the historic St Kilda ground that has become a regular festival venue for the women's game.

The double-header format of opening day is part of the WBBL's design: two games, one ground, one ticket, and a rolling day of cricket that showcases the whole league at once. It also compresses the storylines. By the time the second match began, the Thunder had already banked two points and the Renegades were nursing a collapse; by the end of it, the Stars had announced themselves through their two biggest names. Five weeks of this, at venues across Australia, will sort the eight teams into finalists — and if the first day is any guide, the sorting will be done by all-rounders and by captains who can still change a game on their own.

Lanning's return deserves its own note. The former Australia captain retired from international cricket in 2023 as one of the most successful leaders the women's game has known, and after time away from the WBBL she is back in Stars green this season. A 71 on opening day is more than a good innings; it is a statement that the most decorated batter in the league's history has come back to play, not to be honoured. Every young player in the competition — and every opponent planning for the Stars — took note.

For the Renegades and Hurricanes, the consolation is time: a long league stage forgives a bad first day, and both will play again within days, carrying lessons — in the Renegades' case, about finishing an innings; in the Hurricanes', about defending the undefendable — that are better learned in week one than in the finals. For the Thunder and the Stars, the message of day one was simpler and happier — two wins, two all-round stars, and a season that has started exactly as they would have drawn it.