With a place in the final at stake, Washington Freedom will face San Francisco Unicorns in qualifying

Washington Freedom is aiming to become the first team to reach the finals of the 2024 Major League Cricket season. On Monday, we will play a qualifying match against the San Francisco Unicorns at Grand Prairie Stadium in Dallas.

Our qualifier against SFU on July 25 is scheduled to kick off at 7:30 PM CT (July 26, 6:00 AM IST). The MLC 2024 match will be available to watch via live streaming and broadcast.

The top two teams in the MLC 2024 points table will meet in the Qualifier, with the winning team advancing directly to the Finals. The losing side will get one more chance at redemption when they meet the winners of the Eliminator Match, a match between the third- and fourth-place teams.

On Monday we lost our last league match in Dallas by six wickets (DLS method) to SFU. It was the first defeat of our MLC season this year.

Still, we finished top of the MLC 2024 points table with 11 points from seven games, which puts us ahead of SFU in terms of net run rate.

Travis Head and captain Steve Smith shone at the top of the batting order with half-centuries, while Andrew Tye took three wickets, albeit in a losing cause, in a rain-shortened match.

Saurabh Netravalkar tops the bowling charts in MLC 2024 with 12 wickets from just five matches, an average of 12.16 runs and an astonishing strike rate of 9.16.

Meanwhile, Head and Smith have moved to second and third place on the overall batters list. Head has 250 runs from seven matches at an average of 41.66 and an excellent strike rate of 173.61, while Smith has amassed 247 runs at an incredible average of 61.75 and a strike rate of 144.44.

WF vs SFU Form in MLC

We have won four of our last five league games in the MLC 2024 season, with a six-wicket loss to San Francisco Unicorns on Monday being our only defeat this year. We have met SFU twice in MLC history, with both teams winning a game each.

Washington Freedom's Last Five Games

WF vs SFU, MLC 2024 Qualifier: Players to Watch

Head, Smith and Tye were the positives that shone in our loss to the San Francisco Unicorns in the last game. For a change, Smith outscored his left-handed leadoff partner on the powerplay.

Our skipper hit three sixes and five fours as he raced to 44 from just 22 balls to take us to 70/0 after the first six overs. Meanwhile, Head stepped up after Smith departed to complete his fourth consecutive fifty in MLC.

Both Smith and Head were involved in a record partnership, adding 101 runs, our highest for a wicket in the MLC, before the opening wicket against SFU. The duo have scored a total of 497 runs of our total 936 runs this season, a staggering 53%, and that too at a rapid pace. Another flying start on Thursday and we have one leg in the final.

Tye, playing his first game of the season, took three wickets against SFU in our final game. Although Tye was a little expensive, he dismissed big hitters Jake Fraser-McGurk, Josh Inglis and Sherfane Rutherford, the latter two in the same over, to keep us in the game through the defence.

Meanwhile, Netravalkar will once again be our trump card, with his best spell in the MLC against the same opponent last year. His astonishing figures of 6/9 against SFU in 2023 helped us win a low-scoring match by a comfortable margin of 30 runs.

Washington Freedom Team: Steven Smith (c), Akhilesh Reddy, Jack Edwards, Andries Gous, Travis Head, Lahiru Milantha, Mukhtar Ahmed, Justin Dill, Ian Holland, Marco Jansen, Glenn Maxwell, Obus Pienaar, Rachin Ravindra, Amila Aponso, Lockie Ferguson, Akeal Hosein, Saurabh Netravalkar, Andrew Tye, Yasir Mohammad

Where to watch WF vs SFU Qualifier MLC 2024 LIVE

LIVE coverage and streaming of the Washington Freedom vs San Francisco Unicorns match will be available on Monumental Sports Network and Willow by Cricbuzz in the US. The match will kick off at 7:30 PM CT on July 25.

The WF vs SFU match will be streamed LIVE on the Jio Cinema app and website in India from 6:00 AM IST on July 26.