Thunder anxious to secure Russell’s talents for next season
– Sydney Thunder are desperate to tie West Indies all- rounder Andre Russell to a new contract before the Big Bash season ends, after the player’s massive impact with the franchise during the current campaign.
The 27-year-old, a lively seamer and a devastating lower order batsman, has been one of Thunder’s best players and has also found himself immensely popular with franchise fans.
Sydney Thunder allrounder Andre Russell.
And such has been Russell’s impact that Thunder general manager Nick Cummins said they planned to make his contract renewal “priority” as they begun to plan for next season.
“Of the guys that are off contract he’s [our priority]. We’re already in discussions and we’re hoping to have something done before the season ends,” Cummins said. “He’s definitely a priority, we couldn’t have asked anything more from him.”
Russell has delivered for Sydney in style this season. He has a leagueleading 13 wickets and had produced a couple of cameos at a strike rate of 181. The Jamaican is also a brilliant fielder, taking three catches.
His interaction with Sydney fans has been fantastic and Cummins said the franchise wanted to move quickly to ward off any other attempts by rivals to secure Russell’s services next season.
“I’d imagine there’s other teams wanting to recruit Andre. he can do everything with bat, ball and in the field,” Cummins noted.
“At the same time he was available to be signed last year and the Thunder was the team that saw that and hopefully he sees we were the ones who backed him . . . who stood behind him.
“He is one of those players who plays the way we’d all love to and I think the way he goes about his cricket is why he’s so popular.
He’s explosive, dynamic and spectacular.”
Russell has morphed into a T20 specialist in recent years, campaigning in all the major leagues across the globe.
Last year, he played in the Indian Premier League, the Caribbean Premier League, the South African Ram Slam Bangladesh League.
He is set to play in the inaugural Pakistan Super League next month. and the
Premier
- Test cricket must adapt to survive in the face of the ever- tightening squeeze from shorter, more lucrative, forms of the game, both England and South Africa’s captains said yesterday.
Calling for more structure in the cluttered cricket schedule, Alastair Cook and AB de Villiers agreed there is a growing tug on player commitments between the traditional format and Twenty20 competitions like the Indian Premier League (IPL) and Australia’s Big Bash. “I think it’s a growing concern for the ICC (International Cricket Council) and they’ve been talking about it for the last few years,” De Villiers, whose own workload between test cricketand his earning potential in the T20 format has been widely debated in recent weeks, said.
He reportedly earns $1.4m playing in the IPL for Royal Challengers Bangalore — dwarfing his South Africa contract.
In a separate news conference on Wednesday ahead of the third test between the two countries at the Wanderers in Johannesburg, Cook said that while the five-day game still represented the ultimate test for a player, it could not risk standing still. “Everyone loves test cricket, I believe,” Cook said.