Owen five-for sends Unicorns to their first defeat of MLC 2025
Unicorns are still on top of the table, but Freedom now have the same points as them and are only behind on net-run rate
ESPNcricinfo staff
29-Jun-2025 • 4 hrs ago
Mitchell Owen destroyed Unicorns with a five-wicket haul • Sportzpics for MLC
Washington Freedom 169 for 6 (Phillips 58, Edwards 42, Pienaar 30*, Bartlett 4-32) beat San Francisco Unicorns 157 for 9 ( Short 67, Hamilton 31*, Owen 5-17) by 12 runs
San Francisco Unicorns are not unbeaten in MLC 2025 anymore, and though they are still right up there on the points table, it's only on net run-rate now, after Mitchell Owen's five-for helped Washington Freedom hand them a 12-run defeat in Dallas on Saturday.
Matthew Short, the captain, had another good day with the bat as Unicorns started their chase of 170, a smallish target looking at the way the games have gone so far. But he had to go it alone at the start, with Unicorns getting to 52 for 1 in the powerplay despite Finn Allen and Jake Fraser-McGurk contributing very little.
In Sanjay Krishnamurthi, Short found a slightly more enterprising partner, but when Short became the third man out in the 11th over, he had scored 67 of the 97 on the scoreboard. But with just 73 to get, Short hadn't left his middle-order batters with a lot to do.
That's when Owen the bowler came to the fore. Short was his first wicket, in his first over, and Owen sent back Hassan Khan and Romario Shepherd off consecutive balls in his next. And in no time, with Jack Edwards and Ian Holland chipping in with wickets, Unicorns were 113 for 7 in the 16th over.
Owen wasn't done. Returning for the 19th, he sent back tailenders Haris Rauf and Brody Couch too, to finish with 5 for 17, leaving Unicorns with 27 to get from the last over. Despite Jahmar Hamilton's unbeaten 18-ball 31, Saurabh Netravalkar closed the game out, conceding 14 from his six balls.
When Freedom opted to bat, they wouldn't have expected to be down at 13 for 3 by the end of the third over, all thanks to Xavier Bartlett, who ran through the top three of Owen (a first-ball duck), Rachin Ravindra and Andries Gous.
Glenn Maxwell didn't last long either, but the resistance came from Edwards and Glenn Phillips, who added 71 for the fifth wicket, even though they took 64 balls to do it. Phillips hadn't really changed gears till that point, but did immediately after as he and Obus Pienaar added 31 in 12 balls, and, after Phillips fell for 58 in 39 balls, Pienaar added 37 in 16 balls in his unbroken seventh-wicket stand with Mukhtar Ahmed.
Both teams now have six wins from seven games, but Unicorns still have a big advantage on NRR: 2.016 to 0.603.