It took one spell for Hamish McKenzie, Perth Scorchers’ new spinner, to take the Big Bash League by storm.
Hamish McKenzie’s BBL debut against Melbourne Renegades was a highlight. The match was lost after Perth Scorchers struggled in 6.5 overs. He finally won a bowl in the next match against Melbourne Stars.
As Stars were only 34-2 after five overs, Ashton Turner took the match with a powerplay with none other than Marcus Stoinis. McKenzie stopped Stoinis and Thomas Rodgers from escaping. Stoinis played his two balls carefully and then converted one into a single, leaving him with just three overs.
Turner took Mackenzie with him. When he returned, the Stars were 49-5. Hilton Cartwright and Jonathan Merlo played six singles matches with him.
In the next over, Mackenzie caught Cartwright at deep midwicket. Osama Mir, who was next in the field, tried to play the next ball but was bowled off the line. His last two overs were just three and he finished with 2 wins and 13 losses.
Hamish McKenzie has his first two Big Bash wickets! 🔥 #BBL13 pic.twitter.com/WswA7r1Frn
– KFC Big Bash League (@BBL) 13. 2023 年 12 月
McKenzie is a first-class cricketer whose “elements of the game” are modeled after fellow Western Australian and Scorchers’ Brad Hogg, but he will be playing in October 2022, just as the team begins its T20 preparations. It made the news for the first time. Collect the World Cup. Before the big tournament, before warm-up games, the team played tour games to adapt to the environment.
India played twice against teams from Western Australia at the WACA. They won the first game and few took notice of the left-arm wrist spinner, who scored 18 in his two overs.
“It was a great experience. We were playing with players like KL Rahul and Rohit Sharma and in the first few overs I didn’t really know what I was doing.” McKenzie later recalled.
In the second game, the Indians were 2-for-58, chasing 169. Well, Mackenzie defeated Hardik Pandya. In the second half of the match, he also caught Dinesh Karthik and finished with 2-27. “I settled in well and the lessons I learned were great,” he later recalled.
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Just 23 at the time, he spent the remainder of the 2022/23 season playing for Western Australia’s second team. He defeated the combined Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales District 11 teams by an innings, winning 2-29, 6-72. The Scorchers called him up to replace an injured player. However, McKenzie had to wait another year to earn a cap in any format.
He worked for Subiaco Florito in Western Australian Premier Cricket before being called up to the Scorchers ahead of the 2023/24 season. That was in October of this year. He needed to replace Ashton Agar, who is suffering from a calf injury.
8 wickets earned him two caps in three days in the Marsh One-Day Cup and Sheffield Shield. The first match was uneventful, but in the Shield game New South Wales defeated Western Australia by an innings, but ended up winning 2 and losing 58. Returning to class cricket, he took his seven wickets against Wanneroo.
It seems unlikely that McKenzie will return to first-class cricket for any immediate long term, at least until Agar is fit again, or even after that.
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