Julien Mark Wiener (born 1 May 1955) is a former 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 played in six
Test matches Test match in some sports refers to a sporting contest between national representative teams and may refer to:
* Test cricket
* Test match (indoor cricket)
* Test match (rugby union)
* Test match (rugby league)
* Test match (association football)
...
and seven
One Day International
A One Day International (ODI) is a form of limited overs cricket, played between two teams with international status, in which each team faces a fixed number of overs, currently 50, with the game lasting up to 9 hours. The Cricket World C ...
s in 1979 and 1980. A right-handed opening batsman and a very occasional
off spin
Off spin is a type of finger spin bowling in cricket. A bowler who uses this technique is called an off spinner. Off spinners are right arm, right-handed spin bowling, spin bowlers who use their fingers to spin the ball. Their normal Delivery (cr ...
bowler, until
Michael Klinger's debut he was the only known
Jewish Australian
Judaism is a minority religion in Australia. 99,956 Australians identified as Jewish in the 2021 census, which accounts for about 0.4% of the population. This is a 9.8% increase in numbers from the 2016 census.
There are many estimates of how ...
to represent his country at cricket. A tall man, he was known for batting bare-headed showing his blonde hair.
Biography
Wiener's mother and father, Bella and Sasha, were
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent
* Polish chicken
*Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...
and
Austrian Jews
The history of the Jews in Austria probably begins with the Jewish diaspora, exodus of Jews from History of ancient Israel and Judah#Roman occupation, Judea under Roman occupation. Over the course of many centuries, the political status of the ...
respectively, and both escaped the
concentration camp
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...
s of
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
during
The Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
. The surname Wiener came from
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
, the home of Sasha. His parents married in 1947 in Paris, before coming to Australia as refugees on the famous
Dunera
HMT (Hired Military Transport) ''Dunera'' was a British passenger ship which, in 1940, became involved in a controversial transportation of thousands of "enemy aliens" to Australia. The British India Steam Navigation Company had operated a prev ...
ship in 1947. Wiener's father ran a successful textile business, which allowed him to send Wiener to the private
Brighton Grammar School
, motto_translation = Let us keep pursuing better things
, city = Brighton
, state = Victoria
, zipcode = 3186
, country = Australia
, coordinates ...
. Wiener's father had early sporting success in
table tennis
Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small solid rackets. It takes place on a hard table div ...
, which Wiener applied to his cricket, playing for
Prahran
Prahran (), also pronounced colloquially as Pran, is an inner suburb in Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia, 5 km south-east of Melbourne's Melbourne central business district, Central Business District, located within the City ...
in Melbourne grade cricket. He subsequently completed his university education at
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology
RMIT University, officially the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology,, section 4(b) is a public research university in Melbourne, Australia.
Founded in 1887 by Francis Ormond, RMIT began as a night school offering classes in art, scienc ...
in business management, before moving to England to pursue his cricket career.
He made a
century
A century is a period of 100 years. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages. The word ''century'' comes from the Latin ''centum'', meaning ''one hundred''. ''Century'' is sometimes abbreviated as c.
A centennial or ...
on his
first class debut for
Victoria
Victoria most commonly refers to:
* Victoria (Australia), a state of the Commonwealth of Australia
* Victoria, British Columbia, provincial capital of British Columbia, Canada
* Victoria (mythology), Roman goddess of Victory
* Victoria, Seychelle ...
against
Queensland
)
, nickname = Sunshine State
, image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg
, map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = Australia
, established_title = Before federation
, established_ ...
in 1977–78, scoring 106. Two strong seasons, including three further centuries, saw Wiener selected to make his ODI debut as an opening batsman in December 1979 at the
Melbourne Cricket Ground
The Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), also known locally as "The 'G", is an Australian sports stadium located in Yarra Park, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Victoria. Founded and managed by the Melbourne Cricket Club, it is the largest stadiu ...
against
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
and the
West Indies
The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greater A ...
. He struggled, scoring 7 and 27 respectively. Despite this he was selected to make his
Test cricket
Test cricket is a form of first-class cricket played at international level between teams representing full member countries of the International Cricket Council (ICC). A match consists of four innings (two per team) and is scheduled to last fo ...
debut against
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
at the
WACA a few days later. He made 11 in the first innings before being run-out while batting with captain
Greg Chappell
Gregory Stephen Chappell (born 7 August 1948) is a former cricketer who represented Australia at international level in both Tests and One-Day Internationals (ODI). The second of three brothers to play Test cricket, Chappell was the pre-eminen ...
, before scoring 58 in the second innings as Australia won the match. He played in four consecutive tests that summer (two each against England and the West Indies) before being omitted for the final test of the summer.
Wiener played in five further ODIs in the Australian season, with his best performances being a 33 and 50 against the West Indies in Sydney in the final two group matches. Averaging only twenty, he was dropped from the ODI team for the finals and ended his ODI career with a slow strike rate of only 42.
He was named to
tour Pakistan in early 1980, and was recalled to the Test XI for the second and third tests in
Faisalabad
Faisalabad (; Punjabi/ ur, , ; ), formerly known as Lyallpur ( Punjabi, Urdu: لائل پور), named after the founder of the city, but was renamed in 1977 in honour of late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. It is the 3rd largest city of Pak ...
and
Lahore
Lahore ( ; pnb, ; ur, ) is the second most populous city in Pakistan after Karachi and 26th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 13 million. It is the capital of the province of Punjab where it is the largest city. ...
. He made his highest score of 93 in the third test, but that turned out to be the last test of his career, as he was not selected for the national team again. He scored 281 runs at an average of 25.5 in his career.
He, along with
Jeff Moss
Jeffrey Arnold "Jeff" Moss (June 19, 1942 – September 24, 1998) was an American composer, lyricist, playwright and television writer, best known for his award-winning work on the children's television series ''Sesame Street''.
Early life
...
had a partnership of 390 at the
Junction Oval
Junction Oval (also known as the St Kilda Cricket Ground, or the CitiPower Centre due to sponsorship reasons) is a historic sports ground in the suburb of St Kilda in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
The oval's location near the St Kilda Junc ...
against
Western Australia
Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...
in 1981–82. This still stands as a record for the third wicket for Australians in first-class cricket. Wiener scored an unbeaten 221 in that innings, one of three centuries he produced in the season. Wiener played at the first-class level until retiring at the 1984/85 season, having scored seven centuries in 66 matches. He had also claimed 17 wickets with his off spin, although none of these came at national level.
Wiener has worked in the corporate sector since leaving cricket.
He worked in sales for various companies, and formed his own consulting company in 2015.
Julien Wiener profile
LinkedIn
LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented online service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Launched on May 5, 2003, the platform is primarily used for professional networking and career development, and allows job se ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wiener, Julien
1955 births
Living people
People educated at Brighton Grammar School
Australia Test cricketers
Australia One Day International cricketers
Jewish Australian sportspeople
Jewish cricketers
Victoria cricketers
Australian cricketers
Australian people of Polish-Jewish descent
Australian people of Austrian-Jewish descent
Cricketers from Melbourne