The Australian Blind Cricket team heads off, next week, to England to win the Ashes. The itinerary is below and scores will be updated to the website, Facebook & Twitter following each game. 

The team is;

Matthew Horsey (Captain)

Matthew McCarthy (Co Vice Captain)

Cameron Role (Co Vice Captain)

Chris Baillie

David Gauci

Mark Haskett

Nick Haydar

Lindsay Heaven

Corey Heberley

Peter Loh

Hamish MacKenzie

Ray Moxly

Daniel Pritchard

Peter Robinson

David Saxberg

Brett Wilson

Michael Zannis

Officials: Sandra Clemens (Manager), Neil McKay (Coach), Julie Clay (Physio), Michael Clemens (Umpire), Greg Heaven (Scorer), Phil Penn  (National Selector/Assistant Manager)

2012 Blind Cricket Ashes Timetable

Blind Cricket Australia is proudly supported by Brien Holden Vision Institute, Lord’s Taverners Australia & Cricket Australia.

A Blind Cricket Team from England toured Australia in April 2000, during their tour; they visited Victoria, NSW and Queensland and participated in matches against each State before commencing a Tri Nations tournament between England, New Zealand and Australia staged in Brisbane.

The tournament was an outstanding success with Australia being declared the winner by not loosing a match. England finished second and New Zealand third. In January, 2004, Australia played New Zealand in a three match series at Bankstown Oval in Sydney. Australia won all three games.

In September, 2004, Australia toured England for the first Ashes five match series. England won the series three games to two.

A Blind Cricket Team from England toured Australia in December, 2008 for the Return Ashes series,

New Zealend again toured Austral in 2009 with this series was mad up of both ODI (40 Over games) and T20 gavme. Australia won this searies with a clean sweep. Australa then toured the West Indies on 2010 with a team that comprised both expireniced and also some new faces to the team.they played well however were beaten by the national West Indies side in all matches except for the final game that was washed out.

This brings me to now and this Febuary in Adalade the Australin blind cricket team will take o the current world cup leaders on pakastan. updated information on these matches can be found at the link below.

Blind Cricket is played in essentially the same way as the conventional game of Cricket with the major exceptions being: 

• Audible ball – the ball rattles/rings when moving (note: ball is of similar size and weight to a conventional cricket ball) 
• A side is made up of four totally blind players (B1’s), three poor partially blind players (B2’s) and four partially sighted players (B3’s).  Each sight category has a 12th man (14 players in total, eleven players and three 12th men) 
• All bowling is underarm and the ball must bounce at least twice before reaching the batter.  Before delivering the ball B1 players receive a direction call from the wicketkeeper to find the correct line to bowl.  B1 players must bowl a minimum of 40 per cent of the overs in an innings 
• Totally blind players have a runner when batting and are credited with two runs for every run scored off the bat 

Australia developed the game of Blind Cricket, a sport which is now played throughout the world.  The game had its beginnings in 1922 in Melbourne, Victoria where it was first played at a hostel in Prahran, a suburb of Melbourne.  At the time of a Test Match, two residents thought blind people could play cricket as well, and put rocks in a tin can and began to play a crude version of what we play today.  The game was then introduced to other States in Australia and was mainly played during lunchtime at workshops where vision impaired people were employed. 

In 1928 in Sydney, the first Interstate game of Blind Cricket took place between NSW and Victoria.  Later the same year, a NSW team travelled to Melbourne to continue the challenge. 

In January 1953, the Australian Blind Cricket Council (now Blind Cricket Australia) was formed in conjunction with the inaugural Australian Blind Cricket Carnival (Championships) which were held at Kooyong in Melbourne. 

Australian Blind Cricket Carnivals (Championships) are conducted bi-annually and are held in State rotation around Australia. 

The game started as planned with Peter Robinson on day one again leading his team with an unbeaten 43 and the old stager Michael Janes with a solid 21, outside of this however the Extras were the winner with a total of 42. The team batted on at the start of day two with and lost some quick wickets that did not really harm the plan as they were hunting quick runs, Institute faced its maximum of 60 overs giving the Glenferrie team around 52 or so over’s to chase down the total. Bowling was shared around with the highlight being Brendan Spencer taking his first wicket. Look out for this young man in the future is my tip. No betting please.

With that in mind the Glenferrie team started the game needing only around 2.1 runs per over. Ty Atkinson opened and retired on 40 and I am saddened to say that is about the some of the highlights package for the team with the other team members putting on only 20 runs. Peter Hyczka was run out in tragic circumstances with some poor hearing from his partner at the time. Ok that was me so I can take some of the blame. We found out later it was a bit of a muddle all round by both players and officials however that’s the game of cricket for you. Notable bowling for Institute was Paul Annable with 3 wickets and Michael Sadhu also with 3 as the acting Capitan on day two.

In the end the Glenferrie team only made 74 and after playing on for a time with institute batting again and the light closing in the game was called off with Institute taking home the 4 points for the first innings win.