Australian Test Star Simon O'Donnell from cricket to Horse Racing
by A.C. De Silva
FROM CRICKET TO HORSE RACING ..... This is how former Australian Test
cricketer Simon Patrick O'Donnell is keeping himself occupied. When
O'Donnell celebrates his half-century in years on the 26th of January,
he has somewhat been a man of many sports. Besides cricket, he has been
a VFL footballer, a horse racing fan, a cricket commentator. He is
currently a horse breeder.
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Simon O’Donnel – in his active cricket playing days. |
The game of cricket has brought him many accolades. He started as an
all-rounder for Victoria in the Sheffield Shield between 1984 and 1993,
scoring a century in his first match. He went on to play 6 Tests in
1985, five on the Ashes tour of England and one at home, but with a low
bowling strike rate in five and four day cricket, he was more successful
in the shorter version of the
O'Donnell maintained a very goof batting strike rate of 80.96 runs
per 100 balls in ODIs, almost double his scoring rate in Tests. For six
years, O'Donnell held the record for the fastest half-century in One Day
Internationals (18 balls v Sri Lanka, Sharjah, 1990, until Sri Lanka
Sanath Jayasuriya scored 50 from 17 balls v Pakistan at Singapore on 7
April (1996), a record which still stands.
He was captain of Victoria for five seasons from 1988-89 until his
retirement in 1993. This was a mixed period, which included a Sheffield
Shield victory in 90-91, but Victoria also finished last in 1988-89,
1989-90 and 1992-93.
Seen as a limited-over specialist with clever medium pace bowling and
explosive lower order hitting, he played 87 ODI's between between 1985
and 1992, scoring 1242 runs and taking 108 wickets in his career. He
played in Australia's 1987 World Cup Final victory, but soon fell ill
and his illness was diagnosed as cancer. However luck was with him and
he recovered with treatment to return to the Australian One-day team in
the 1988-89 season.
Besides his active playing days, O'Donnell was involved in sports
promotion and he seemeu to be thrilled with the Nine Network, where he
has been a commentator of cricket and now presents the Cricket Show.
However, last month, Nine Network announced that O'Donnell had left
the network.
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