Thaindian News

Sydney, Feb.4 (ANI): AT 65 and having given up smoking, former Australian cricketer Doug Walters says he’s now waiting for an Indian Premier League (IPL) or Big Bash call-up.

The latest member of Australia’s cricket’s hall of fame may be only half-joking, but this middle-order great, with his free-scoring ways, would have been a natural for the Twenty20 game.

‘Having given away smoking two years ago, my phone’s always on; I’ve left my number in India and I’m waiting for one of these contracts,’ said Walters, who will be officially inducted at tonight’s Allan Border Medal function in Melbourne, reports The Age.

He added: ‘I quite enjoy the Big Bash and I would have enjoyed playing it because it only goes for three hours. It gives us more time to drink, doesn’t it?’

Walters doesn’t need the cult status the shortened version of the game would have afforded him. That he already has - courtesy of a knockabout image cultivated in an era when a lunch break durry, card games as you waited to bat, and several post-stumps beers wouldn’t put you on the front pages.

Walters’ Test career started in the mid-1960s, stretched to the start of the 1980s and was punctuated by two years in the army.

His return to Test cricket was done in a swashbuckling style, battering India and the West Indies during 1968 - scoring a double century and century in one Test at the SCG.

He also famously scored 100 in a session against England in Perth in 1974, emphatically hooking pacer Bob Willis over the fence off the last ball of the day to bring up his ton. (ANI)