Simon O'Donnell
Cricket
Simon played as an all-rounder for Victoria in the Sheffield Shield between 1984 and 1993. He played 6 Test matches, 5 on the 1985 Ashes tour of England, but was more successful in One Day Internationals.A medium pace bowler and lower order big hitter, he played 87 times between 1985 and 1992, scoring 1242 runs and taking 108 wickets in his career. He was played in Australia's 1987 World Cup Final victory but then soon after was diagnosed with cancer. But he came back from the brink to return to the Australian One-Day team in the 1988-89 season.
At one time he held the record for the fastest half-century in One Day Internationals (18 balls v Sri Lanka, Sharjah, 1990, until Sri Lankan Sanath Jayasuriya scored a 50 from 17 balls v Pakistan at Singapore on 7 April 1996).
His ODI career scoring rate is 80.96 runs per 100 balls which is quite high and Test scoring rate was 43.74 runs per 100 balls.
He was captain of Victoria's 1991 Sheffield Shield winning team.
AFL
An Australian rules footballer with the St Kilda Football Club in 1982 and 1983, he played 24 games and kicked 18 goals. He was recruited from Assumption College Kilmore where he had kicked over 100 goals in his senior year. He retired from football to focus on his cricket career. Was approached to return to AFL football in 1984 after Tony Lockett was injured but was advised to decline due to his cricketing commitments.
Media career
O'Donnell hosted Melbourne radio station Sport 927's morning program with Kevin Bartlett until 2004.
He has been a commentator of cricket for the Nine Network since 1997 and currently hosts The Cricket Show.
External links
- Simon O'Donnell's Cricinfo statistics
- Simon O'Donnell's ODI Howstat statistics
- AFL Statistics: Simon O'Donnell
- Brydon Coverdale, "Australia's Winter Allrounders: XI Test Cricketers who played Australian Rules football at the highest level", Cricinfo, 28 May 2007
- Nine network's Cricket Show
See also
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Last updated on Saturday October 04, 2008 at 08:21:24 PDT (GMT -0700)
View this article at Wikipedia.org - Edit this article at Wikipedia.org - Donate to the Wikimedia Foundation
