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'Didn't deserve to win BBL' - Henriques

Sydney Sixers captain Moises Henriques said his team failed to put "a full game together" and hence, winning the Big Bash League wouldn't have been justified

The Sydney Sixers didn't deserve to win the BBL because throughout the season they failed to play a full match to their potential, according to their captain Moises Henriques.
Henriques felt the Sixers could have rescued the final against the Scorchers after losing three early wickets, but once Brad Haddin was dismissed for 38 off the bowling of Jhye Richardson, the Sixers floundered their way to 141, a total Henriques said was 30 to 40 runs short of a defendable target.
"We never really played a fantastic game of cricket," Henriques said. "We played some good cricket in patches but we couldn't quite put together a full game so I look back on the season where we probably didn't deserve to win the competition to be fair. We never could quite put a full game together.
"From our part that was probably the most frustrating part of the the game. We did get off to a couple of nice starts with the bat in a couple of games when we were making big chases but our Powerplays in general were not very good."
The Sixers barely scraped into the top four after a topsy-turvy group stage, in which they beat teams above them on the ladder and, before the final, only lost to the bottom-three teams: the Sydney Thunder, Hobart Hurricanes and Melbourne Renegades. In a season of inconsistencies, the Sixers played in fits and starts but were unable to pull the elements of their game together for a complete performance.
"We found ourselves a lot of the time fighting back into to games rather than leading the games from the front, so it's definitely something we need to address for next season," Henriques said.
"Our bowling Powerplay was pretty poor almost the whole season, basically every game, the semi-final was the only one you'd accept. So there's one big thing there. In T20s, momentum is such a big thing and you always want to start well and unfortunately in more games than not, we didn't.
"So there's some really encouraging signs knowing that we didn't play all that well but we still got six wins and got through to the final," Henriques said. "I feel like we've got a terrific squad, we've got some terrific players that make up our team and across the board batting or bowling, I feel we've got some match-winners but unfortunately tonight we were outplayed."

Melinda Farrell is a presenter with ESPNcricinfo