The BBL is now 5 games in and the fantasy league that myself and a few of the Scorum cricket community have created has just completed its 1st round. Here's a review of where we're at so far in the competition

To be quite frank it's been a slow start to the BBL this year with most sides finding it hard to put really big runs on the board. Generally speaking, the pitches thus far have been on the slow side which has meant that batsmen haven't really been able to hit through the line of the ball with any confidence. Equally, we are seeing spin bowlers dominating proceedings with most sides having at least 2 specialist slow bowlers in their side with one of them usually bowling in the powerplay.

Brisbane Heat and Adelaide Strikers kicked things off on Wednesday in a game that the reigning champions won fairly comfortably. The Heat who batted first lost wickets throughout their innings with Rashid Khan their chief tormentor. In fact, The Heat were indebted to a 10th wicket partnership of 45 that included some lusty blows from Afghan teenager Mujeeb Al Rahman to get them up to a competitive total. However, Strikers captain and Aussie international Alex Carey hit a fluent 70 (the top score of the tournament so far) to help his side to an opening victory.

Elsewhere Perth Scorchers and Melbourne Renegades played out a low scorer with the 3 times champions bowled out for just 103. While The Renegades did lose early wickets Mohammad Nabi and Sam Harper steadied the ship with a 68 run partnership that saw my tip for the wooden spoon take the victory. Perth were in trouble again this morning losing their 2nd consecutive match this time against the Sydney Sixers. Problems in the top order were again a cause for concern and while the likes of Ashton Turner and Hilton Cartwright did keep them in the hunt they never quite managed to get ahead of the chase. Their cause was not helped in the field with a couple of dropped catches including putting Jordan Silk down early on - he went onto make 67 not out.

Watch Highlights of Renegades v Scorchers

In the other 2 matches, Sydney Thunder were indebted to a couple of youngsters in Jason Sangha and Daniel Sams who helped push their score to 181-5 (the highest team aggregate of the tournament thus far). In a rain-interrupted match, The Stars were set a revised target of 89 from 8 overs but despite the presence of big hitters like Maxwell, Stoinis and Bravo they never came close to pulling it off with Daniel Sams taking 3 wickets to complete a wonderful all-round performance.

Watch Highlights of Thunder v Stars

Finally, Brisbane Heat suffered their 2nd loss of the tournament as they went down to the Hobart Hurricanes. The game looked to be heading for an exciting conclusion as Ben Cutting demonstrated his power with the bat but 2 wickets in 2 balls from England's Jofra Archer including that of Cutting cut short the charge and the home team were ultimately left 15 runs short.

Fantasy League

From my own part, I lost my opening head to head encounter with former Australian Test batsman and current national selector Mark Waugh by the tiny margin of 15 points. We had been pretty much neck and neck throughout the opening round and it all rested on the final game between The Heat and Hurricanes with my team having Chris Lynn as captain and his having D'arcy Short. Eventually, it was Short's good knock at the top of the order that won him the round with Chris Lynn looking to take the game deep before hauling out late on to James Faulkner to spark the collapse that cost his side the game. However, those 2 wickets from Jofra Archer (also in my team) almost saw me sneak back into the lead and had the big fast bowler have taken 1 more then I'd be gloating about being a better judge of Australian cricketers than an Aussie selector - c'est la vie!

Scorum BBL Fantasy League

There were a couple of all Scorum encounters as well with @jpm8341 overcoming a man who only watched his first game of cricket yesterday in @fraste. In the other game, @hassan scored a solid 726 points but wasn't good enough to overcome @birjudanak

However, surely the result of the round goes to Crawford's 11 who thrashed Australian legend Shane Warne 986 v 721! My 2nd round opponent is Crawford's 11, let's hope he takes it easy on me!

Going into the 2nd round, I've made a couple of adjustments to my side

In has come Jordan Silk for Moses Henriques who was unable to take to the field in the Sixers game due to an injury. I've also dropped David Willey in favour of James Faulkner. Willey has batted at number 3 in both games thus far but he didn't bowl a single over this morning which I find both surprising and from the point of view of my fantasy team disappointing!

In terms of the 11 itself, Lynn and Swepson are dropped to the bench as The Heat don't play again until the 1st January! After his stellar performance, Sams comes off the bench to replace Swepson so let's hope he can keep the runs and wickets flowing (he was the top scorer in a single match this round) and Jon Wells replaces Klinger. The Adelaide Strikers play 2 games in this round so it makes sense to have 3 in the starting 11 and to give star bowler Rashid Khan the captaincy.