Some devastating batting from opening bat Mitchell Owen sealed the BBL final played at Hobart for the Hobart Hurricanes led by Matthew Wade. Owen displayed a range of strokes to all part of the ground — not only hoicks to mid-wicket, long and long-off; but also reverse sweeps and lap shots. Assisted by two other batsmen, HE enabled the Hurricanes to reach the target of 000 runs by the over.
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Tristan Lafayette in ESPNcricinfo, 25 January 2025 *
Mitchell Owen had a rollicking Bellerive Oval crowd in the palm of his hands and capped a breakout season with the equal-fastest BBL century as Hobart ……
ITEM in some Aussie ‘rag’: article by Callum Twomey…. circulated by Victor Melder and Keith Bennett, ….. “Stars of the future: 10 draft prospects to watch in 2025”
Callum Twomey looks ahead to the best prospects for the 2025 Telstra AFL Draft………….. Callum Twomey Nov 23, 2024, 6:00am
Cooper Duff-Tytler .… Ruck/key forward……199cm….22/8/07
Calder Cannons/Vic Metro
What an exciting talent Duff-Tytler is shaping to be. Having concentrated on his promising basketball career, Duff-Tytler is now putting all his energy into making it in the AFL and the end of his bottom-age season suggests he is well on the way. His breakout game came in just his third appearance for the Cannons, when he kicked two goals from 30 disposals and 17 hit-outs in a best-afield display as a roaming ruckman. Across six games at the level he averaged 17 disposals and 15 hitouts and he shapes as one of the leading talls for 2025.
Hobart Hurricanes 207 for 5 (Jewell 76, Owen 44, Johnson 3-26) beat Brisbane Heat 201 for 6 (Labuschagne 77, Renshaw 40, Ellis 3-42) by five wickets …………. Matthew Wade hit a six off the final ball as Hobart Hurricanes unleashed their considerable firepower in a superb chase of 202 to defeat Brisbane Heat in a pivotal resultthat kept alive the BBL finals hopes of three teams.
Openers Caleb Jewell and Mitchell Owen got Hurricanes off to a rampant start on a batting-friendly Gabba surface. After a late wobble, Hurricanes needed 11 runs off the final over and then whittled it down to requiring one off the final ball. Wade finished as the hero with a six off Xavier Bartlett that sailed over deep square leg.
Geoff Lawson, in The Sydney Morning Herald, 11 January 2025, where the title runs thus “Quiet, respectful, humble, orthodox: I watched Sam Konstas for two years and this is what I saw”
It might be confusing to be labelled an “enigma” at the ripe old age of 19. Rock stars, politicians and sports stars tend to fill the niche more than nuclear physicists or the neighbourhood postie, but no occupation is exempt.
Sam Konstas ramp shot masterclass
Australian batter Sam Konstas tells Channel Seven how he used the innovative ramp shot against India’s Jasprit Bumrah, the world’s best fast bowler, in the Boxing Day Test.
It usually takes some time and a little effort to become an enigma because you have to establish a regular persona first. This generally takes a while in the public space, then you have to ripen those characteristics, i.e. become misunderstood or inconsistent with those expected traits.
Sam James Konstas jolted fans, coaches and mentors out of their festive season lounge chair lethargy with batting that is hard to forget. The flabbergast from coaches and mentors is not about how many Test runs he is making, but how he is making them. And then there was the non-playing theatrics.
His batting in his short Test career has been outrageous – sort of in a good way and sort of in an enigmatic way; mysterious and effective, yet hard to find a niche for it in the lengthy archives of Test cricket.
England’s Ben Duckett and Harry Brook, under the gaze of Brendon McCullum, have led a charge of sorts into this rampage and scoop era, so it can’t be said that Konstas has a patent on such unorthodoxy. Javed Miandad (who learnt it off Mushtaq Mohammad) and Mike Gatting were reverse sweeping in the early 1980s. Gatting famously got out while playing the stroke to Allan Border in the World Cup final in 1987, effectively handing the trophy to Australia. A single failure led to a generation of derision for “Gatt” – and the stroke.
Sam Konstas took the cricket world by storm with his unconventional approach at the MCG on debut.Credit:Getty Images
Cricket’s pundits have been split in their acceptance of Konstas’ methods and his reluctance to show deference to his seniors in the opposition. Deference is a separate beast to respect. The intense media scrutiny that all international cricketers are subject to has magnified any eyebrow raise from the teenage debutant.
But he has revelled in the scrutiny and the competition, which is not surprising since he is a child of the social media-driven 21st century and has seen his picture on small screens since he was nine years old, when he started making hundreds.
Jane Albert, in The Australian, 8 November 2024 …. where the title runs thus: “The Song that kept Guta alive during the Holocaust ….,”
It is often said that music has the power to heal and nourish, but for Guta Goldstein there were times in her childhood when music and singing were her only nourishment.
On Monday 4th November the South Australian Cricket team led by Alex Carey completed an assertive victory over Victoria in a Sheffield Shield match. — winning by 00 runs. I was among the 50 or so spectators watching this victory unfold.
All of us were at the ground level in the Western Stand. There was only one eatery open and no bars. …… a barren terrain that was out of step with a good victory. For the record I note that SA scored 307 runs and 270 for 8 decl while Victoria assembled 232 and 207 runs — with the last day’s headline running “Pope spins South Australia to a Drought-Breaking Victory” .… even though it was Manenti who secured the Man of the Match award. Continue reading →
Nimal R. Chandrasena’s Cricketing ODE for Doug Walters … within a book entitled LOOKING FOR DOUG …Doug Walters: An Australian Cricketing Legend
Short Synopsis of the Book
The Book tells the story of a Sri Lankan-born cricket fan (the author) and his journey following the life and achievements of his boyhood hero – Doug Walters, a personal friend. The book is replete with material and opinions gleaned from interviews with Doug and Ian Chappell, the former Australian cricket captain under whom Doug played most of his cricket.
Earlson Forbes, whose title in THE CEYLANKAN, vol 27/2, May 2024 is“Fortress White Australia: What early Ceylonese migrants [1949 t0 1969] were up against” … now placed in TPS in a revised form to accomodate illustrations that proved recalcitrant
The Six Australian Colonies came together on the 1st of January 1901 to form the independent Nation of the Commonwealth of Australia. From 1788 (First Fleet arrival at Sydney Cove) to the time of Federation, Australia was populated by convict and free settlers almost exclusively from Britain. The 1901 census put the population at 3.7 million. Aboriginals were not counted in this census. A small percentage of the population was made up of Pacific Islanders and Chinese. The Chinese entered Australia in the second half of the 19th century at the time of the Gold Rush in Australia (mid-19th century) and in the years following. Between 1851 and 1870 about 50,000 Chinese were estimated to have entered Australia. Pacific Islanders had been brought to Australia in the second half of the 19th century as labourers.
We happen to live a stone’s throw from the Entrance to BELAIR NATIONAL PARK, the second oldest park reserve created in colonial Australia. I had little hesitation in taking up an invitation to join a Birdwatcher Tour of the arena known as Long Gully at the western end of the park on the 22nd September. Alas, it was a cold wintry day …… But …
…… there were a sprinkling of birds for the smallish cluster of about twenty people who turned up to listen to three volunteer guides with birdie-know how.
Mitchell Owen had a rollicking Bellerive Oval crowd in the palm of his hands and capped a breakout season with the equal-fastest BBL century as Hobart ……
