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Cricket legend Ian Healy has helped create a unique competition quickly becoming popular around Australia, and now he’s keen to bring it to the ACT.
The 100-ball matches in the Century Cricket Competitions involve Indian Premier League-style drafting or auctioning of players to form teams, and are designed to run with existing club cricket competitions, not rival them.
“Younger players aren’t playing that form of the game, so here’s a way they can get a taste,” Healy told The Canberra Times.
“Rather than going to the nets in pre-season which is what they’d normally be doing that weekend, why not have a few hits in a day, make a final and get competition into you before the grade comp.
“We’d never want it to get in the way of normal cricket. This is an extra cricket opportunity.”
The concept is available for junior to senior cricketers, males and females, and has already been introduced with the Brisbane Premier League (eight clubs) and Adelaide Premier League (six clubs).
In just two years, Century Cricket Group co-founded by Healy, businessman Stuart Giles and former commentator Mark Nicholas has become one of Australia’s largest privately-owned cricket companies, courtesy of a recent acquisition of coaching business, the Australian Cricket Institute.
Melbourne is set to be next in line for the 100-ball competition, but Healy is keen to help Canberra get their own simplified version up and running soon too.
“It’s a modern cricket opportunity that parents and kids especially seem to really, really love,” Healy said.
“If Canberra wanted to do a smaller version of it, we’d facilitate it for them, show them how to run an auction, or a draft day and draft four teams maybe instead of eight.
“Then we’ve got a scoring app that runs the comp for them. We’d do all that back-end, and could help them establish a comp without it being a fully-blown version like we have in Brisbane and Adelaide.”
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Melanie Dinjaski is an experienced sports journalist at the Canberra Times with a genuine love of all sports. She's covered every code from NRL to NFL, and has experience in print, digital, podcasting, TV and video journalism, having spent time working in newsrooms at Nine, Fox Sports and Seven before moving to the capital. Melanie aims to bring Canberrans all the sports news they need to know – have a story worth sharing? Get in touch!
Melanie Dinjaski is an experienced sports journalist at the Canberra Times with a genuine love of all sports. She's covered every code from NRL to NFL, and has experience in print, digital, podcasting, TV and video journalism, having spent time working in newsrooms at Nine, Fox Sports and Seven before moving to the capital. Melanie aims to bring Canberrans all the sports news they need to know – have a story worth sharing? Get in touch!
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