James Matthew Muirhead (born 30 July 1993) is an Australian

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

er who has played for Victoria and the Perth Scorchers.

Early career

Muirhead began his professional cricket career playing for the Adelaide Strikers in the inaugural edition of the

Big Bash League The Big Bash League (known as the KFC Big Bash League for sponsorship reasons, often abbreviated to BBL or Big Bash) is an Australian professional club Twenty20 cricket league, which was established in 2011 by Cricket Australia. The Big Bash Le ...

(BBL) in the 2011/12 summer. He was given a rookie contract to play domestic cricket for his home state of Victoria the following year. During the 2012/13 season, the South Australian cricket team approached Muirhead to recruit him without Victoria's permission or knowledge, a breach of Australian cricket legislation that incurred a 15,000

AUD The Australian dollar ( sign: $; code: AUD) is the currency of Australia, including its external territories: Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, and Norfolk Island. It is officially used as currency by three independent Pacific Isla ...

fine for South Australia.

International career

Muirhead had an abrupt rise to Australia's national cricket team in the 2013/14 season. He began the season without any contract for the BBL (though he did get signed as an injury replacement to play for the Melbourne Stars midway through the season). He played several tour matches against the visiting English side during the

2013–14 Ashes series The 2013–14 Ashes (named Commonwealth Bank Ashes Series for sponsorship reasons) was a Test cricket series between England and Australia. The five venues for the series were the Brisbane Cricket Ground, the Adelaide Oval, the WACA Ground, the ...

, including a 50-over Prime Minister's XI match in January 2014, where he had bowling figures of 3 for 52. Despite only having four career Twenty20 matches to his name (including only two for the Melbourne Stars that season), the Australian selectors were impressed by Muirhead's performances in the tour matches and selected him for Australia's Twenty20 International squad against England in January 2014. He performed well in the three-match series, taking two wickets in the third match. Off the back of his international debut, Muirhead signed a four-year contract with Victoria, and he was selected to represent Australia at the 2014 World Twenty20 in Bangladesh. At this time, he had only played a combined total of 20 days of cricket across all formats at a professional level.

Later career

After his return from the World Twenty20, Muirhead began to experience wrist pain. Over the course of 2014 the pain got worse, and he couldn't earn selection to play for Victoria. He underwent surgery in June 2015.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Muirhead, James 1993 births Sportspeople from Melbourne Victoria cricketers Adelaide Strikers cricketers Melbourne Stars cricketers Living people Australia Twenty20 International cricketers Australian cricketers Perth Scorchers cricketers