Southern Brave registered their first points on the board in the Men's Hundred, winning by 12 runs against the Birmingham Phoenix.
Marcus Stoinis starred with an all-round display, top-scoring with 34 (26) and then producing an inspiring new-ball performance with figures of 20-13-16-2.
And despite Sean Dickson inflicting a late scare with a couple of sixes against Brave skipper Chris Jordan, a team hattrick featuring two wickets from Luke Wood and a direct hit from Adil Rashid added the cherry on top.
Earlier, Rehan Ahmed (3-25) and Ben Dwarshuis (2-18) had stifled the hosts to what looked like a fourth straight defeat, before the Brave's bowlers showed they had other plans.
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Stoinis excels in both innings
It was only Stoinis who injected the spark in what was an otherwise lackluster staging with the bat for the home side.
It was a struggle for him too, but the brute power led to two maximums off his bat in quick succession. Stoinis fell to a half-tracker from Ahmed which he bludgeoned straight to Donovan Ferreira. Come the end of proceedings, those 34 runs turned out to be gold dust for Brave.
"We're pumped, we needed that," exclaimed Stoinis in the post-match chat.
"We've had close games but got over the line. It's hard batting first, fresh wicket today, hard to know what a good score is. That's the struggle, an extra 10 runs might have made that a lot easier. On a wicket like this, it was just consistency and subtle changes. Just glad it's working for me."
And while Will Smeed and Joe Clarke seemingly sailed along smoothly, Stoinis produced a wonderful opening spell where he only conceded two runs off his 10 deliveries to begin with.
He set up Clarke brilliantly, first bowling a heavy ball into the surface, before searing in a yorker the next delivery. The Phoenix opener, who was already itching to get underway with his innings, then holed out to Tristan Stubbs at deep square off a short ball.
Check out the scorecard from Southern Brave vs Birmingham Phoenix.
Poor batsmanship costs Phoenix dearly
And that was only the start of some ordinary batting from Phoenix. Clarke could have parked the ball in front of midwicket, perhaps, as on a slower surface, hitting in the 'V' is more rewarding, due to the lack of pace to work with.
It then followed when Ahmed decided to launch consecutive sixes off Jordan on a day where percentage cricket was the need of the hour.
Three balls later, Ferreira tried to hoick Archer into the stands, only to lose his bails. Suddenly, Southern Brave smelled blood.
The story continued, with Laurie Evans chasing a wide delivery and nicking off to Jamie Smith, while Mitchell Owen, who was being teased and probed by the wily Adil Rashid in a 10-ball burst, got bowled tried to hack a googly across the line.
What next for both teams?
Phoenix will have no time to dwell on this result, as they're back in action versus the Welsh Fire on Saturday, 1st August. So are the Brave, who travel to the capital to take on an upbeat London Spirit side.
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